In the pre WWI period, many North American cars also had buffers,but they were placed close together above the coupler. They were often called deadwoods.
I don't know that I'd say "many", but deadblocks were used most often in the thirty years before World War I as a means of keeping the couplers themselves from taking the full brunt of a hard coupling. The development of more rugged couplers and draft gear obsoleted them, and many roads removed them in the 1920s.
