A rare Bowie knife with a crocodile on its handle sliced through its guide price of £200-£250 to sell for £2,500 at Hansons Auctioneers’ recent four-day sale.
The folding blade was the work of Sheffield maker J Hinchliffe and included the words ‘For self-preservation’ on the blade.
The unusual design, also inscribed ‘Celebrated Bowie knife’, featured a recumbent lion on its pommel.
Hansons Auctioneers’ militaria expert, Matt Crowson, said: “Hinchliffe was a rare maker of this type of knife, and demand can be strong when they come to market.
“The marks to the blade and the inscription is unusual and suggests it may have been a premium line in its inventory. It might also have been a privately commissioned piece, which would make it rare, and possibly a one-off.”
The Bowie knife is named after Jim Bowie, a famous 19th-century American frontiersman who died at the Battle of Alamo in 1836, aged 39.
He sprang to fame after a widely-reported fight on a Mississippi sandbar in which he used a large knife to fend off attackers.
After tales of Bowie’s exploits spread to the UK, knife makers in Sheffield – famed for its production of cutlery and blade manufacturing – began making Bowie knives for export to the US.
Matt continued: “These knives were often engraved with patriotic or frontier imagery which capitalised on the public’s romanticised image of the American West.”
Despite being made for export, many remained in Britain or were brought back by travellers, soldiers, or collectors, he added.
The knife’s maker, John Hinchliffe, who was born in Sheffield in 1810, began trading as a blade maker in 1837 under the name ‘Hinchliff’.
His specialties included pocketknives, daggers and even American Indian and self-defence knives.
In 1851 he was one of the exhibitors at the Great Exhibition in London, offering ornate knives for both men and women, as well as – according to the fair’s catalogue – “American hunting lock knives, in fancy handles, etc.”
But despite Hinchcliffe’s success all was not well and he died in a lunatic asylum, near Warrington aged 48 with the cause of death listed as ‘exhaustion from acute mania’. He was buried in a pauper’s grave.
A 1840 Hinchliffe folding Bowie knife with German silver mounts, made $10,200 at an auction in the US.
Auction Details
Auction: Derby September Four-Day Antiques & Collectors Auction
Auction date: 18th – 23rd September 2025 | 9:30am
Location: Hansons Derbyshire Saleroom
Auction contact: [email protected]
Catalogue/bidding: www.hansonslive.co.uk | www.the-saleroom.com
