Though there is a little confusion about the spelling, it seems that a Mr Hiat(t) started producing prisoners’ handcuffs, felons’ leg irons, gang chains and collars in Birmingham around 1780. Fortunately, the leg irons, gang chains and collars were soon consigned to history, though Hiatt as a company survived for over 200 years as one of Britain’s, and the world’s, leading providers of handcuffs. The factory closed in 2008, though it seems ‘Hiatt’ still survives under new ownership since Hiatt products are still available in 2013.

Unsurprisingly, for a company that specialised in high quality steel restraint devices, they diversified a little at some point to produce pitons and karabiners. We don’t have any direct information of when this came about, but the early karabiners seemed to have appeared in the late 1950s with the British Mountaineering Council approving the large ‘D’ shaped karabiner in 1963. We suspect these pitons come from the same era or maybe a little later, and they look a lot like the Chouinard Lost Arrow piton which was around at the time. The Hiatt ones were sized 1-7 and with the others we have in the collection there’s nearly a full house. The Hiatt ones were part of Mick Tighe’s armoury back in his early mountain guiding days.