grumpyswordsperson:

victoriansword:

qsy-complains-a-lot:

victoriansword:

victoriansword:

British Lead Cutter, 19th Century

@sgtblades 

They were used to cut lead bars. Lead cutting was a sword feat which could entertain an audience at an assault-at-arms, but it could also help with training as it helped to teach edge alignment. The excerpts below are from Every Boy’s Book of Sport and Pastime, edited by Professor Hoffmann, 1897.

what’s an assault-at-arms :?

@qsy-complains-a-lot

The phrase “Assault at (or ‘of’) Arms” was coined in the early 19^th century to describe displays of skill-at-arms performed as public entertainment. Many of these events combined competition with showmanship; some were strictly competitive and others pure ballyhoo. All were influential in the development of Victorian combat sports, self-defence systems and military close-quarter battle techniques.

Wolf, Tony. “Tournaments and Combative Exhibitions in Victorian England”, Journal of Manly Arts, August 2001.

Among the participants of the assault you can spot a Corporal-Major Waite of the Second Life Guards, who would later go on to found his own school and publish a fairly popular handbook on the sabre. Yes, the book includes sword feats!

(The pdf above also includes a newspaper article regarding the assault advertised above. Shoutouts to Matt Easton for compiling the file!)

Assaults at arms were also cash-earning “charity benefits”; Waite’s book mentions one on behalf of a soldier’s widow, and illustrates another to benefit the Royal Caledonian Asylum (a children’s home for orphans of Scottish soldiers).