Antique Billy Club or Truncheon

Type used on the waterfront from about the 1880s 19 1/2" turned wood with beaded grip and transverse hole with original leather wrist loop. Use of truncheons like this continued in salon and particularly through the Prohibition period, however this one is clearly hand turned, yet made for the commercial market, dating it to the earlier period. Specifically, the beading on the grip is cut measuring neither the spacing nor depth of cut. By the late Victorian period, automatic jigs to cut decorative features in furniture were universal and a club such as this would have been cut with a single multi-point tool.