Whistle Categories > Skeleton Whistles
Where did skeleton whistles originate?
Predominantly these mostly silver early skeleton whistles are seen coming from the UK, so this seems to be their genesis. Although expanding to many countries in time, the use as a lady’s adornment or charm dropped off rather rapidly with the states, Japan and other adopting them for advertising.
However since we find the oldest ones in the UK and because they were of silver, they are often hallmarked or even have a lozenge stamped on them. This enables the student/researcher to identify the maker as well as the city of origin.
How are skeleton whistles identified?
These escargot or snail shaped whistles are purposely missing the sidewalls of the main body, ergo the name skeleton. By holding the whistle with fingers closing the sides, the whistle can then be blown and it will work again driving the blown air across the window edge.
As described the hallmarks lead one to a silversmith. Later steel was used and then reference needs to be deferred to a catalog or even a patent document.
Other means may have to be resourced through advertisement pages for whistles or even toys as they in time fell to that level.
Why were they made?
It appears that these skeleton whistles were made as ornamental jewelry at first as a novelty silversmith item. At the same time, fine whistles like these would have been a status symbol rather than a need safety item.
They were typically very small, perhaps purposely marketed to women’s small fingers. Additionally, this type of small whistle is very high pitched.
Eventually they gained size so that a man would be comfortable using them. In effect expanding the market, however it did not respond.
Later the skeleton whistle changed, going in two directions, one direction aimed towards advertising purposes, they again became smaller and lighter, occasionally out of aluminum.
The other direction was marketed towards tin litho toys made of tin ( litho ) designs.
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