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F.H. Audley was a saddler who ran a business in New York City starting in the 1870s. As his business in horse tackle declined with the spread of automobiles, he found himself looking for other product lines. In 1906 he moved to a location across the street form a New York police station, and found himself fielding a lot of requests for holsters from the local police officers. He would end up patenting a number of holster designs and features, but the most popular and successful was his Safety Holster.
This design used a spring loaded metal catch that locked into the trigger guard of a pistol or revolver, which had to be manually depressed to draw the gun. It is a design that would not pass muster by today’s safety standards, but did hold the gun quite effectively and with pistol like this Colt 1903, was not actually much of a safety hazard (thanks to the gun’s grip safety). Audley died a few years after he patented the design in 1914, but his design would continue to be produced until the 1950s or 60s. Examples can be found made for nearly every popular pistol used in those decades, from all sized of Colts to Savage to Lugers and revolvers as well.
This particular holster and Colt 1903 have the remarkable provenance of having belonged to Roger Hall, an OSS Jedburgh agent who wrote “You’re Stepping on My Cloak and Dagger” – a rather self-deprecating account of his activities with the agency during World War Two. You can find the book here:
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At Forgotten Weapons I think the most interesting guns out there are the most obscure ones. I try to search out experimental and prototype weapons and show you how they work, in addition to more conventional guns that you may not have heard of before. You’re much more likely to find a video on the Cei Rigotti or Webley-Fosbery here than an AR or Glock. So, do you want to learn about something new today? Then stick around!
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