Medical Students With Bowie Knives

A doctor, W.W. Keen, wrote an article for the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal in which he described the medical students of the 1850s and 1860s as rough and ready types--"a good deal beyond the 'Old Stone Age,' of course, but with some of its feral antagonisms still manifest."

The police and the medical students were far more intimately acquainted then than now. The professors, too, were frequently obliged to mediate between them. Rather often one of the Jefferson Faculty was hauled out of bed to haul a student in turn out of the lockup.

Their belligerency may be judged by a story told me by Dr. Weir Mitchell. It must have occurred shortly before 1860. A young man desired to enroll with him as an "office student." In questioning him as to his educational qualifications, Mitchell fortunately asked if he had any "accomplishments," whereupon he put his hand to the back of his neck, drew forth a bowie knife, and, without a word, implanted it deftly in the frame of Mitchell's window between two panes of glass. It is needless to add that he was referred to a more martial preceptor.

While I'm not sure I believe that tale--who can throw a knife that well?--it is true that there were many instances of medical students and doctors fighting with bowie knives, some of which I have recounted in earlier blog entries. To add another, here is an article from the New York Daily Times about two Southern medical students studying in New York City who had a fatal affray in 1853:

AFFRAY AT A MEDICAL COLLEGE

Tuesday afternoon an affray occurred at the Medical College, situated in Fourteenth street, near Third-avenue, between two medical students from the State of Virginia, by the names of DAVID E. BASS and WILLIAM IRVIN. The parties became more and more enraged at each other, and the result of the dispute was, that IRVIN drew from his breast pocket a large bowie knife, with which he stabbed his antagonist (BASS) three different times in his cheek and abdomen, the blade of the weapon penetrated to such a depth, that the wound will probably result in the young Southerner’s death. The wounded man was immediately conveyed to his boarding-house, in Tenth-street, near the Second-avenue, by his friends who procured medical aid, and he lacerated wounds were carefully dressed. Capt. HARTT and officers ELDER and ROBINS, of the Seventeenth Ward Police, made every effort to arrest the violent assailant, but were unsuccessful, and it is supposed he has fled the City. The origin of this serious difficulty is not yet known.

The Gaucho's Skill at Knife Throwing

A facón worn at the rear of the belt.

The following excerpt from Lewis R. Freeman's "On the Pampas,”  an article in a 1920 issue of Living Age magazine, describes the Argentinian gaucho's fabled skill at throwing his facón, a large knife carried for fighting and general tasks, much like the bowie.

The danger zone encircling a gaucho with his knife in his hand is by no means limited to the circle he sweeps with his extended arm. I am not sure just how far it does go, nor have I the least desire to find out. I heard, however, a crack revolver shot, a man who could blot out the spots on a ten of spades at a dozen paces, say that he would be extremely reluctant to take his chance at a draw-and-let-go with a gaucho at any distance under twenty yards. An illuminative case in point came to my attention in Buenos Aires. As a class the American agricultural machinery experts sent to Argentina are as handy with six-shooters as any I have ever met. They are mostly Westerners, have used revolvers from their childhood, and their arms, from which they never separate themselves for a moment while in campo, are always of the best and latest pattern.

Not once or twice, but on dozens of occasions, have I seen one or another of these men with his Colt's or Mauser 'automatic,' after a preliminary shot or two to get the range, bowl over a rabbit running at full speed across the pampa. This is good shooting, as will be appreciated by anyone who has had experience of the revolver. Yet the case I have in mind is that of a threshing machine expert from Texas - a crack shot - who had trouble with his Argentine maquinista [machine operator], had an even break on a draw at twenty-five or thirty feet, and was retired from action with a knife through his shoulder before his revolver was clear of its holster.

My own experience of the gaucho's skill in knife-throwing, though not as serious, was quite as convincing as the one I have just detailed. It chanced that a man at an estancia [ranch] I visited was famous for his skill in this particular, and one day I was ill-advised enough to admire the marvelous deftness with which he was plotting out the outline of a human profile upon the woodwork of a threshing machine by chucking his facón into it from a distance of eight or ten feet. He acknowledged my compliments with a characteristic gaucho bow and smile, but assured me that what I had seen was nothing, since it required no exercise of nerve on his own part nor that of anybody else; but if I would do him the honor to walk off about fifteen paces and hold up the little piece of paper I saw on the ground there, he would perhaps be able to show me a feat that was really worth while.

I walked meekly off as directed, but with a sinking heart, for I didn't need to be told that I was to hold that accursed bit of paper up while my blackbearded, careless-eyed friend tried to hurl his eighteen-inch-bladed knife through the middle of it without amputating my hand, and I was never so lacking in enthusiasm for any proposition in my life. Courage to hold the thing up I knew I had -- that was a small matter -- but I didn't want to hold it up, and of courage to refuse I had none at all. Besides, I had admired the fellow's skill, and he undoubtedly figured he was doing me no small honor in permitting me to be a party to his exhibition; to refuse to act the part of a passive foil would be, under the circumstances, an offence unpardonable.

Inwardly, I was in a terrible turmoil, but focussing all my attention upon the parts that showed, I managed to present a fairly unruffled exterior. The piece of paper I found to be a page from the popular Buenos Aires weekly, Caras y Caretas, measuring, I should say, about five inches by eight. This, after cramming my pipe in my mouth, I held out in one hand with all the appearance of nonchalance I could muster, but grasping no bigger a piece of the corner than was absolutely necessary to keep it from fluttering away. With my free hand I scratched a match; then nodded what was intended for an indifferent acquiescence in response to the gaucho's interrogation as to whether or not I was 'listo,' and at the moment when the knife went 'whicking' through the paper without so much as tearing its edges I was vigorously puffing away for a light. I continued to puff until my match went out before I discovered that I was trying to light an empty pipe. For the next two weeks I had 'facón' nightmares every time I dropped off to sleep.

This little incident, in no consequence of itself, was the immediate cause of another that resulted more seriously. It appears that scarcely had I left the harvesting outfit to return to the estancia house, when one of the Italian hands declared that he, too, was an expert in knife-throwing, and called for a volunteer to hold up the paper that he might give proof of his skill. The gauchos and Argentine peons laughed at his pretensions, but an English sailor, who had deserted his ship in Bahia Blanca to take advantage of the high wages paid in harvest time, foolishly walked over and held up the punctured sheet. Probably he did not appreciate how difficult a thing the feat really was. If he had, after the Italian had missed the paper by a foot the first throw, he would have seen he was dealing with a novice and withdrawn before it was too late. As it was, the knife, at the second trial, struck the unfortunate fellow upon the inside of the wrist, tore its way through bone and sinew, to leave the hand hanging by only a few shreds of flesh and tendon. We saved him from bleeding to death with a tourniquet, but the hand, of course, had to be sacrificed.

More on gauchos and their knives here.

Knife Throwing Scene in "The Magnificent Seven"

James Coburn's knife throw from The Magnificent Seven.

There's a famous scene in The Magnificent Seven in which the James Coburn character, Britt, proves his claim that in a showdown in which his opponent is armed with a pistol and he is armed with a knife, he can kill his opponent by throwing his knife into him faster than his opponent can draw and fire his gun. The scene can be watched here.

On the special features track of the DVD, Coburn says that he received knife throwing lessons from a stuntman, Richard Farnsworth, who went on to have a successful acting career of his own. Coburn regularly practiced his throw in his bedroom, making his wife nervous.

But how plausible is this scene? Plausible enough for a Hollywood movie, in which through the magic of editing the knife has barely left Coburn's hand when it is shown sticking out of the gunman's chest. However, if you watch the video below, in which a Japanese knife thrower, Houzan Suzuki, attempts to duplicate Coburn's throw, you will get some idea of the amount of time it takes the knife to reach its target after it leaves his hand. Granted, the underhand style is probably the slowest way to throw a knife, but that was the technique used in the movie.



In that time a skilled pistolero could get easily get off an accurate shot, and a slug from a .45-caliber revolver is going to shut a man down a lot faster than a knife wound to the chest. Bob Munden shows how fast it is possible to shoot a single-action revolver. (Granted he has evolved to the superhuman level.)

Bowie Knife Thrower: Joe "Brokenfeather" Darrah

I got an interesting email today from Joe Darrah, who makes custom bowie knives designed for throwing, as well as a whole line of more conventional throwing knives. He produces between 500 and 700 knives per year. I particularly like the above models, which have a classic "big bellied" bowie look similar to the Western and Case bowies. The image of the Alamo and the date of the battle are  engraved on the blade, with some elements cut completely through. Darrah created these especially for a knife-throwing event he helped organize at the Alamo.

Darrah, who is one quarter Blackfoot and has the Native-American name "Brokenfeather," was taught to throw an M-3 trench knife at age five by his father, who was then with the 101st Airborne in Korea and Germany. He has been throwing knives for the 49 years since, has worked as a circus knife thrower, and is an eight-time world knife-throwing champion as well as an all-around knife enthusiast and collector.

There's a short video of Darrah throwing knives here, and pictures of part of his collection here.

I have a chapter on throwing the bowie in my book. Among the people who were said to have developed a particular talent for it were Charlie Siringo, the "cowboy detective"; John Cremony, the Apache fighter; and William Gregg, a member of Quantrill's Raiders. However, I found only one or two documented accounts of men actually killing an opponent in a fight by throwing their bowie at him. (One or two depending on how much credibility you give one of the accounts.)

Throwing your knife at an enemy is generally considered a bad idea, because if you miss you've tossed away your weapon. In his book Knife Fighting, Knife Throwing for Combat, Michael Echanis resolves this problem by recommending that you carry two or three knives. Throwing the first will either succeed in incapacitating your opponent or cause him to cover up or evade the attack, enabling you to close in and finish him off with a second blade.

The Gaucho and His Knife

American knife technique was strongly influenced by techniques practiced south of the border. Argentinian gauchos often carried a long fighting knife called a facon. Ernest William White presents a fanciful view of the skills of the gaucho in Cameos from the Silver-land (1881).

Amongst his special powers however must be early enumerated, skill with the knife, by the aid of which he is more than a match for an Englishman with his revolver: of course the latter is unaware of the mode of attack, and this is the great source of danger. Formerly the Gaucho was afraid of the revolver, but not so now; perhaps the knife is up his sleeve and whilst addressing his victim with great politeness, it is allowed to run down into the hand and, before a revolver can be levelled, is plunged with lightning stroke into the heart of his adversary, no mistake is made, the aim is always deadly; sometimes the knife reposes in his long riding boot, and stooping down apparently to arrange that, is suddenly withdrawn and launched on its fatal mission; at others resting with the hilt on the curved middle finger and the blade along the forearm ready to be darted point first, and at a distance of ten yards it is winged with certain death. In fact it would take a good swordsman with his favourite weapon to obtain an advantage over a Gaucho with his facon; when they fight, they cover the left arm with two or three folds of the poncho, allowing the ends to hang down and form a shield which, kept in perpetual motion, effectually screens them and dazzles the eyes of their adversary, and so it is very difficult to see or get near them; they are stupendously quick with the arm and wrist but clumsy on the lower limbs: yet take his knife from him and the gaucho is helpless for business, pleasure or attack. With equal facility the Gaucho manages the bolas and the lasso and at the distance of thirty yards blunders are seldom committed; these instruments in his hands are really formidable, so that a European, whether on horseback or on foot, and engaged in a deadly struggle with him, is to a great degree helpless: if again in treachery a Gaucho hides behind a rock or tree for the passing traveller, his doom is pretty well sealed; his horse entangled with the bolas or himself with the lasso, there is no escape except perhaps by the instant severing of the latter with a very sharp knife, which many keep for the purpose.