• Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Wednesday, 12th June 2013

As reported in “Popular Electricity and the World’s Advocate”, 1913:

Now electricity comes to the policeman’s aid. Jeremiah Creedon, a resident of Philadelphia and an engineer on the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad, has perfected and patented a device by which a policeman can control the most desperate and unruly prisoner.

The inventor describes it as “an improved electrical device for use of policemen and others in making arrests, subduing unruly persons and resisting attacks.” It consists essentially of a pair of gloves provided with electrodes which may be brought in contact with the person grasped by the hand of the wearer. An electric circuit, the terminals of which are formed by the electrodes, supplies an electric shock to the prisoner and effectually renders him unable to resist arrest.

The power for this instrument comes from a battery, worn either in a belt that is provided with it, or in the pocket of the policeman’s coat. Connected with this device also is a small lamp which can be held in one hand and which receives it’s light from the battery. By this means both force and light are provided.

The belt is so fashioned as to take the place of the regulation policeman’s belt. A compact storage battery is carried on the hip and is connected in electric circuit, by conductors, with the primary windings of an induction coil. The secondary windings of the induction coil are connected by flexible, insulated conducting cords or cables to electrode plates located in the palms of a pair of gloves, the electrode plates being insulated from the gloves and from the hands of the wearer by insulating disks.