This Victorian defense would have been worn facing backwards so that its wearer could retaliate against an attacker who had snuck behind them with a garrote. It would have been fired by pulling the lever at the bottom with an attached string and toggle.
They were a response to a moral panic around crime, more specifically violent criminals garroting individuals as a means of robbery. The extent of how common this type of attack was is unclear.
The back plate is riveted to a split belt, one side of which has a guide loop for the trigger string. Concealed lockwork. Overall design is different in all details from that patented by Henry Ball on 8 Feb 1858.
Royal Armouries: [11:07] https://youtu.be/CjtPf5gegd8?si=
https://royalarmouries.org/collection/object/object-50842
Johnathan Ferguson’s recommended source for further reading: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/victorianstudies.55.4.709
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Don’t you just hate it when people sneak up on you from behind with a garotte?
Dont you just hate it when you are garrotting people and they blast you away with their backwards worn belt gun?
I put on my powdered wig and grab my blunderbuss
True. So rude.
What’s stopping me from accidentally triggering it like when I’m peeing or sitting down?
Every time that has happened I’ve thought ‘holy fuck I want to shoot this dude in the nuts.’
Finally, a product that fits my lifestyle.
To save you a Google search, to garrote is to strangle someone with a length of wire or cord. A garrote is the length of wire or cord in question.
For those of us who haven’t played a hitman game.
Agent 47 certainly would be dismayed to encounter one of these.
Cheese or clay cutting wires are classic garrotes
usually with handles, i believe…
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