12-20-2014, 11:28 PM | #21 |
Join Date: Mar 2008
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Re: [Low-Tech/High-Tech] Looting and Improvising arms and armour in Victorian London
Probably already looted but if there are any pawnshops you should find weapons there, sloppy looters might have grabbed guns but missed boxes of ammo under the counter. Any place with a commercial kitchen should provide cleavers and large knives.
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12-20-2014, 11:49 PM | #22 | |||
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Police Stations
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Anyone who has precise information on the police stations in Whitechapel in 1888 would be a wonderful help. I'm sure this information can be found among copious Ripperology files online, but I still haven't found a one-stop resource. Edit: I've done better now and can confidently state that the Leman Street station, HQ for Division H, is within the affected area. It is likely that the Spitalfield station on Commercial Street and the Arbour Square and Shadwell stations are within the area too, but there are no reliable news of those areas, so it is unclear what their status is. Division H consists in its entirety of almost 700 constables, detectives, sergeants and officers, and it has been reinforced with extra uniformed constables and civilians sworn in to aid in keeping the peace. The Bishopsgate station of the City of London Police is also most probably within the affected area and very close to the St. Botolph's church where the PCs have set up with other survivors, but so far, only a few policemen who were out on patrol have been seen and no one the PCs spoke with has made contact with any police station. I cannot find any source for it, but I would expect that Leman Street Station and maybe the Bishopsgate station of the City of London Police might have a supply of extra cudgels and perhaps even other Victorian Metropolitan Police weapons, such as swords and Webley M.P. revolvers. I don't know about rifles with bayonets, however. Sir Charles Warren, the Commissioner, had been accused of militarising the police and responding excessively to riots, and it is true that newspaper accounts of the time described and pictured the government response to riots on Pall Mall and at Trafalgar Square with policemen driving the crowd at bayonet point, but I just don't know if the Met really had access to such military weapons. The Bishopsgate station of the City of London Police is located next to the City of London Police Hospital, so it would be very useful to send an expedition up Houndsditch and two blocks up Bishopsgate Street, to establish contact. There might be anywhere from 15-60 cops there, but any able bodied man who doesn't shy away from conflict is a help. Quote:
Seasoned street-fighers might be familiar with the concept, but I should think that ordered ranks and shoving with shields would be much rarer than two packs of men with bludgeons coming at one another along a street. Quote:
I've been wondering if explosives could be obtained. Some dynamite would be welcomed by the PCs. They've made common cause with a Fenian revolutionary since drifted into a criminal lifestyle, still in possession of five sticks of dynamite, and are eager for more.
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12-21-2014, 12:24 AM | #23 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: MO, U.S.A.
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Re: [Low-Tech/High-Tech] Looting and Improvising arms and armour in Victorian London
Depending on the business in the area you may find odds and ends to make improvised explosives, don't forget things like carbide lamps and all the street gas powered lights, with a bit of time, and care, you maybe able to make local gas pockets before the pressure drops too low.
Shield wall tactics, true; but some of these guys are probably rugby players, while not ideal, they ought to have some basic idea of what to do from the scrum.
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12-21-2014, 01:36 AM | #24 | |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: [Low-Tech/High-Tech] Looting and Improvising arms and armour in Victorian London
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It wouldn't be especially surprising to have either a construction company or a (likely illegal) fireworks factory in the area. |
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12-21-2014, 01:39 AM | #25 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Pioneer Valley
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Re: [Low-Tech/High-Tech] Looting and Improvising arms and armour in Victorian London
A bunch of thoughts:
* A lot of folks are focusing on the armor situation, but I don't think it's nearly as grim as all of that. Near to the docks, are you? Got plenty of people handy who know how to sew, do you? Have light chain a-plenty, do you? Terrific. Then this is how you do it: you have your seamstresses get to work on sewing tubes of heavy canvas, at the bottom of strips of heavy canvas. One seamstress to a tube, that should go relatively quickly. You sew them all together into a shirt of sorts, then thread those lengths of chain through the tubes. Whomp a blacksmith's leather apron over that to protect the canvas from being ripped, and you've got something I don't hesitate to call DR 3. I'd give it an activation roll, especially against any thrusting attack, but even so. * Blacksmiths were endemic in the Western world well into the 1920s. The notion that you'd have some in the area is sound. If I was directing a blacksmith to make as many weapons for a battle as he could within a couple hours, I'd stick to hammering out crude spearheads that could be lashed onto poles. They don't have to be remotely fancy or durable, they could easily be made out of bronze or brass, and I'd say that a serviceable point from bar stock would take about 15 minutes. * I can't imagine why dynamite would be in the area; if you want some there, make it a fiat. * On shield walls: eeesh. For those of you who haven't had experience in trying to get newbies to hold to any kind of formation in a low-tech battle line, you really can't. It's the product of a lot of training, as well as the ability of an officer to maintain tactical command, the trust of his men even when some of them are falling, and one element very rare to these amateur battles: a reserve. Newbies tend to clump up and to freelance, and those who are otherwise experienced brawlers aren't immune. * On USING shields: getting newbies to keep them up, instead of dropping them to chest level or lower, is a pain in the ass -- it's very akin to novice boxers letting their guards drop and uncover their heads. I don't suppose I'd discourage people from grabbing improvised shields, but I wouldn't go to any great trouble to provide shields, and I wouldn't expect much from them. Honestly, I'd rather hand a newbie a 6-7' improvised spear than a shield and a weapon.
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12-21-2014, 03:58 AM | #26 | ||||||||||
Join Date: Nov 2004
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Re: [Low-Tech/High-Tech] Looting and Improvising arms and armour in Victorian London
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Not proper brigandine, but the half-assed coat of plates I described above is better than leather alone, and a lot better than nothing. Quote:
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[QUOTE=Celjabba;1850340] You may also ask around for families with a ancestor who fought at Waterloo... There must be some cuirass lying around carefully polished. This is french, but I imagine the equivalent existed on the other side. http://www.musee-armee.fr/fileadmin/...se-fauveau.pdf The likelihood of anyone in the East End having Cuirassiers in their ancestry is basically nil; those troops come from the gentry, in the main. Quote:
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12-21-2014, 09:06 AM | #27 | ||
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Re: [Low-Tech/High-Tech] Looting and Improvising arms and armour in Victorian London
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Would it be DR 3?
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12-21-2014, 09:54 AM | #28 | ||||||
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Re: [Low-Tech/High-Tech] Looting and Improvising arms and armour in Victorian London
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If they ever came into possession of museum armour, foreign suits of armour taken as trophies or any valuable memorabilia of Waterloo, they'll have likely sold it to someone wealthier than they are, in order to afford more immediately useful things. The more prosperous citizens of Whitechapel are tradesmen and hard workers who feed large families and invest spare capital in their businesses, not the idle rich and decadent who have the luxury to collect valuable objects as a hobby. Quote:
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Given enough time, taking shoe, boot or even saddle leather and layering it over the chest would make for useful armour, in the absence of something metal. As several posters have noted, however, sewing metal protection into leather, canvas or cloth will likely tbe the best solution, assuming that the PCs have time for something like that. Quote:
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12-21-2014, 10:23 AM | #29 | ||
Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: Luxembourg
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Re: [Low-Tech/High-Tech] Looting and Improvising arms and armour in Victorian London
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Of course, wrought iron or steel sheet is preferable to cast iron, but finding and cutting it will be harder. I am certainly not advocating making any kind of fitted armor with it, just armor plates. Quote:
Whatever you name the full-lenght leather and fur coat a coachmen wear under the london rain at that time is what I mean. It should provide a convenient basis for the kind of armor Icelander described. Strong enough not to tear under the weight of reinforcement, and ample enough that it won't restrict mobility when made semi-rigid by thick leather addon. Celjabba |
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12-21-2014, 10:43 AM | #30 | |
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Central Europe
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Re: [Low-Tech/High-Tech] Looting and Improvising arms and armour in Victorian London
I was surprised to see that so many arrested Chinese carried revolvers given the cost of one in the 1870s.
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improvised armor, low-tech, victorian |
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