I was watching The Untouchables, with Sean Connery. When they went to recruit Andy Garcia, Sean and Andy face off. Sean whips out something that I understand to be a blackjack.
Describe it? It is basically shaped like a lollipop, with a more oblong candy part. Wrapped in leather.
When I was younger, I used to go into a local pawn shop and hang around, and I was told it was a blackjack. Even back then, I thought that blackjacks were used as a bludgeoning instrument. Something like that only seemed capable of putting out somebody’s eye…no good thing, to be sure, but a finger would work just as well, and pen or pencil, better. Actually, there doesn’t seem to be any good use for them as a fighting instrument. How are/were they used? Were they effective?
Blackjacks were (well, are…) awesome CQB weapons. However, in the last 15 years or so, most police departments have disallowed them due to the potential for abuse/misuse. Hitting someone on the noggin’, for example, can be lethal.
The more contemptorary alternatives would be something like the asp (typically a telescoping metal baton that you deploy by flicking it - it’s not a coincidence, I suspect that “sap” and “asp” have the same letters, since they’re variations on a theme).
My personal favorite sap is sap gloves - typically leather gloves with lead powder in the palm and knuckles. Take that, bad guy.
That sort of blackjack you describe (and those used at the time) generally had lead inside the leather. That made them pretty formidable if you hit someone with them.
Blackjacks and their like can be stunningly effective, no pun intended. I have a slapjack, basically a stiff leather strap with a lead weight sewn in (purely for training purposes, not to carry), and you can feel a pretty surprising jolt of pain just just by flicking it into your open palm. I’ve heard accounts of them splitting scalps open like melons, and I don’t doubt it at all. A blow to the back of the skull could do very serious and lasting damage.
Lead pellets in a flexible pouch are extremely efficient at transferring energy to a target, compared to a baton of similar dimensions and weight. If you hit someone in the head, it is very likely to cause a concussion.
My grandfather was a game warden. He carried a blackjack in a little holster right next to his pistol. He retired in the 1960s. I don’t know if other game wardens carried them or if they still carry them.
I remember him saying something like “Everybody I talk to out in the woods is carrying a gun.” so I assume he felt it was a meaningful weapon for close contact with an armed lawbreaker.
As pravnik and awldune note, the blackjack is filled with powdered lead or fine lead shot, giving it significant momentum. The one Connery carries in The Untouchables is a fairly small example of the type; longer ones can be up to the length of your forearm, and land like a ton of bricks. Unlike a baton, just blocking the striking arm isn’t sufficient, as the blackjack will wrap around and hit the blocking arm with a sharp impact, bruising and possibly breaking the arm. As others have noted, the pain from even a small blackjack is significant, even worse than a spring billy, which are also prohibited in many places and by virtually all police departments. While I would personally prefer to use a yantok or ASP-type extensible baton (which gives better range against a knife-wielding opponent) the blackjack is a formidable weapon in trained hands, capable of disabling an attacker in one or two strikes; far more effective than the lightweight polycarbonate PR-24 batons employed by most police departments.
Some of the cops I worked with carried sap gloves. Very handy when breaking up a bar fight or even just a combative individual. “Your honor, I just slapped him. He must have broken his nose when he fell down.”
the most surprising things can be nasty, I have a sjambok, and it looks wimpy compared to a tonfa or baton, but it hurts like you would not believe to get whacked with it.
I think it is more a matter of momentum vs size/weight.
The point of a black-jack was/is to rattle the victims brain rendering them unconcious, but to not leave a cut or obvious mark. Hence having something solid like a padlock or a billiard ball would not accomplish the same thing. You might as well crack them over the head with a baseball bat.
I have a blackjack, but never used it. A couple of guys who claim to have been hit from them say that it is a jarring, paralyzing blow. And they said it left a huge bruise. That’s just hearsay, but I don’t want to get hit by one. I’m not sure what makes them so effective, but it might be that the weight is concentrated in one spot, and it seems difficult to deflect the blow.
Pretty sure that blackjacks split the skin - especially on the scalp. Bukowski writes about getting hit by one over the ear in a nasty urinal while very drunk in LA. James Lee Bourke, writing fiction instead of something that was probably a real Buk experience, in the book with an old Cajun that was sorta kinda a devil, has his hero blackjacked silly.
Any blunt force has the potential to cause laceration - you can’t get much more blunt than a boxing glove and they cause cuts all the time, particularly on the taut skin near the eyes and cheekbones. With a light touch I can see knocking someone out without laceration, but if one isn’t so concerned with finesse and puts some arm and hip action into it, I have no doubt the slapper could break a jaw or split a scalp open pretty admirably, with less windup and much more portability and concealability than a baseball bat.
I had one for a few years and used it once. Mine was around 8" and made from nice braided leather covering what seemed like a very stiff screen-door spring. The business-end was not shot or powder but was an egg-shaped piece of lead. There was also a nice wrist strap.
The thing was astoundingly effective. I’m convinced that hitting someone in the head with any force at all would probably be lethal. Hitting other bones (forearms, wrists, and collar bones) will end a fight just about instantly. I think these are illegal just about everywhere now, at least to carry.
