That ol' black magic

Here's an interesting Web site dedicated to escapology. Two pages of the online catalogue (here and here) offer a variety of handcuffs for sale to the enterprising escape artist. Two of these cuffs are actually called "seance handcuffs" and are similar to those used by fake mediums in Houdini's day.

Also note that gimmicked flex-cuffs are available as bulk orders. The flex-cuffs can be opened and reused. Quoth the site:

YOU can use these SPECIALLY-GAFFED Flex-Cufs again and again, because you can escape from them WITHOUT CUTTING THEM!  Here's the presentation:  You cross your wrists in front of your body, and your assistant locks one of these Flex-Cufs on your wrists VERY TIGHTLY.  A SPECTATOR THEN PULLS ON THE CUFFS VERY HARD, AND SATISFIES HIMSELF THAT THEY ARE INDEED SECURED.  (This part is VERY convincing).  However, you immediately escape without the use of cutters, or tools of any kind, and show the cuffs to be still in one piece (no switching of cuffs).

Cool. But who could possibly have a use for such a thing?

Comments

[Ryan]

VZ is aware of the trick flex-cuffs Michael, he clearly wrote the passage you quote. I can spot those caps anywhere.

[Nate]

Well, now we probably know what David Thompson has been using...

Strange...check it out:

http://icteesside.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/0001head/page.cfm?objectid=11540818&method=full&siteid=50080

[Veritas]

Except David T doesn't cross his wrists in front of his body, his arms are tied to the chair.

[drew hempel]

Hey Michael -- read "The Strange Case of Hellish Nell," a new book on Helen Duncan, the ultimate escape artist!

[Michael Prescott]

Drew,

Thanks for the recommendation. I will order the book. Amazon has knocked the price down from $25 to only $5, making it hard to resist! (The Amazon sales page is here.) The author seems to have fictionalized certain aspects of the story with invented dialogue and other details, but the overall story is said to be true.

Although I have my doubts about Duncan, mainly because of the photos of her very fake-looking "materializations," I admit that her revelation that the HMS Barham had sunk, when the British government was taking extraordinary measures to cover up this fact, is hard to explain as fraud.

[Michael Prescott]

>Except David T doesn't cross his wrists in front of his body, his arms are tied to the chair.

True, but these are presumably not the only tricked-out flex-cuffs on the market.

Of course, the cuffs do not have to be gimmicked. It is possible to escape from standard flex-cuffs. Check out this discussion among escape artists (flex-cuffs come in around three-quarters of the way down the page).

I like this discussion so much, I think I will make it the subject of a new post.

[dave d]

why use cuffs. use grey tape with a seal.

[drew hempel]

Yeah Michael those photos seem to expose fraud indeed, especially with the witness notaries. It is intriguing that Helen Duncan would know military secrets but I'm sure such knowledge was spreading on the underclass circuit, much like happens on the internet today. And the writing style that is parsed in the Amazon reviews definitely makes the read more suspect.

It's an impressive story nonetheless.