Old-Win wrote on Dec 15^th, 2017 at 11:31am:


I notice that some of the 1881 match rifles had no safety which I guess would indicate that the rifles weren’t loaded until the shooter was in position.
My 1881 match rifle has a cocking lever on the left side that goes to half-cock on lowering the block and then can either be taken back to full cock or let down on an empty chamber.
I have a Gibbs Farquharson that has a cocking lever on the right which goes to full cock when the lever is lowered.  
Neither has any other type of safety.

I used to assume that best quality Westleys were to have top tang safeties but there are examples out there which are certainly best quality rifles with either safety and then there are also very plain grade rifles with tang safeties so any configuration is possible.  The tang safeties are generally preferred especially on the ‘97 actions.

It is interesting to note that, while W.R. was using a variety of safety designs, Jeffery stuck with their side safety as did Gibbs for the most part (a few variations here and there) until very late in production when they did make some fitted with a top tang safety.  Now, those are rare...