UN-ENGLISH WEAPONS.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVI, Issue 4867, 19 August 1925, Page 3

UN-ENGLISH WEAPONS.

RECENT use by some gangs. POPULAR FOREIGN WEAPONS. In a recent case the gang who attacked the victim were alleged to have been armed with razors. The razor appears also to be the favourite weapon of the “Redskins, who liave so long been a thorn in the side ot the Glasgow police, and of the “Fine Blades,” r a. gang of hooligans who have given endless trouble in Manchester (writes T. C. Bridges in tne “Daily Mail”).

The razor is a singularly un-Eng-lish weapon, but possibly the blackguards who use it are ignorant of the fact that they are copying, the methods of the American negro. All “bad niggers” carry razors, and have a horrid trick of throwing them. I have seen a negro, for a small bet, cut a stick bf sugar-cane in two with a razor at a distance of 15 or 20 feet.

' Another hooligan weapon is the metal knuckleduster, The London “tough" also uses, a leather belt weighted with a heavy buckle. A blow with such a belt will cut a man’s head open. Lambeth had its “New Girdle” gang, who used weighted belts. There is; a story that some bf these yeuths attacked a quietlooking man one night not a hundred yards from the south end of Waterloo Bridge. He seized two of them, and, picking them up bodily, banged thei> heads together with such force that they were both insensible for more than an hour. Thor popped victim happened to be a professional welterweight. There have recently been several cases of sand-bagging in Britain. Tne sand-bag is another American importation, and is still a favourite weapon of the Bowery Boys. It stuns and often kills, leaving hardly a mark. :

The Paris apaches use the knife, or sometimes the sword bayonet. All their wpmen cai.y knives, sometimes in their sto< xim's, s' metimes in ths=r hair. Most of these terrors of the Pa ’isian under-v. rid are also anr/d with pistols. The Italian crimiim still usas tae stiletto, but the’ Spaniard sticks to the Liiife. The Spanish knite has a broad blade with a razor-sharp edge which folds into its handle. It i» drawn and opened all in one motion, and used with an upward slash, which, if it takes effect in the stomach, is almost always fatal. It can also be’ thrown with deadly effect. The “gun”—that is, the old-fash-ioned revolver—still holds its own in the South and West of the United States. But it is not nearly so popular as it once was, or as the makers of American films would have us- be lieve.