Jenour’s “Brittle Charges”: The Ammunition Baked Like Bread

In 1830, when most improvements in shotgun ammunition involved wire, paper, or increasingly elaborate mechanical contrivances, J. Jenour proposed something simpler. He suggested baking it. His “brittle charges” were formed from flour, water, and shot, dried until hard, and designed to shatter instantly on firing. It was an earnest attempt to solve a serious safety problem, and one of the few…