Period Use
One legend has it that the pocket models were popular with Civil War officers who did not rely on them as combat arms but as defense against battlefield surgeons bent on amputating a limb. Richard Francis Burton was a devotee of Colt Revolvers and carried a selection of them on his mid-eastern journeys including the trip to Somalia and Ethiopia in 1855. A Pocket model receives prominent mention:
" My revolvers excited abundant attention, though none would be persuaded to touch them. The largest, which fitted with a stock became an excellent carbine, was at once named Abu Sittah (the Father of Six) and the Shaytan or Devil: the pocket pistol became the Malunah or Accursed, and the distance to which it carried ball made every man wonder".
Other anecdotal accounts indicate that Bloody Bill Anderson, the Civil War raider, preferred the Pocket Police model.
Read more about this topic: Colt Pocket Percussion Revolvers
Famous quotes containing the word period:
“Adulthood is the ever-shrinking period between childhood and old age. It is the apparent aim of modern industrial societies to reduce this period to a minimum.”
—Thomas Szasz (b. 1920)
“Colonial system, public debts, heavy taxes, protection, commercial wars, etc., these offshoots of the period of manufacture swell to gigantic proportions during the period of infancy of large-scale industry. The birth of the latter is celebrated by a vast, Herod-like slaughter of the innocents.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)