Name/Title
Sussex Police Hiatt 1960 model handcuffsEntry/Object ID
1184Description
Pair of chrome plated steel, swinging bow handcuffs marked "Hiatts 1960", "British Made" and "AC612". No key.Use
To restrain prisoners of a type used by police in Sussex between the 1960s and the mid 1990s.Context
The 1960 model of handcuffs made by Hiatt was the first widely adopted British designed model of "swinging bow" type handcuffs. The name describes the fact that the moving part of the "cuff" moves 360 degrees making it easier to place the handcuffs on the wrist. Hiatt's previous swinging bow design, "The Reliant" model of 1953, had been a failure. Swinging bow handcuffs had first been patented the US in 1912 and Hiatt had made versions of these from the 1930s under licence from the US company Peerless. Only with the introduction of the 1960 model did swinging bow handcuffs widely replace "Darby" style handcuffs in the UK. This model could be double locked by turning the key clockwise one quarter turn, thus preventing the cuffs from over tightening.
Hiatt were a Birmingham based company that made restraints from at least 1780, and whilst best known for handcuffs, they manufactured other police equipment throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. The company ceased UK production in 2008 following increased scrutiny over some of its products and their use abroad.
In Sussex, after the 1968 amalgamation, handcuffs were not issued to individual officers, it being normal practice for them to be allocated to vehicles. Only in the late 1970s did handcuffs become personal issue in Sussex and the Hiatt 1960 model was the first type of handcuffs to be allocated to individual officers. Some examples like this are stamped with warrant numbers, which would have been done locally. These handcuffs used a key with a notch in it, which was not compatible with later Hiatt models, which all used the same key. They continued to be re-issued to officers in Sussex, along with more modern Hiatt models until the mid 1990s when all handcuffs were recalled and replaced with the Chubb "Detainer" model.
This particular pair have a Sussex Constabulary/Sussex Police warrant number "AC 612" on them identifying the officer to whom they would have been issued to. They are known to have been re issued for use by the "Gaoler" at Eastbourne Police station, in the 1980s and 1990s, PC Bill Townsend, who had a number of pairs for taking prisoners from the cells to Eastbourne Magistrate's Court. He would handcuff any prisoners together in a chain and escort them the short distance from the rear of the station to the nearby court.