Not quite in Jesse James's day; James died in 1882 and the H&A Safety Police did not come out until 1908. It was a fairly short lived gun, since H&A went out of business in 1915, but they were fairly popular. Apparently few were really used by police, the name being more hype than a statement of actual usage by law enforcement.
The neat thing about the H&A is the way they addressed the problem of a loaded revolver firing if dropped on the hammer. Iver Johnson used a transfer bar (as does Ruger today), while Colt was just coming out with its "positive" hammer block and S&W was making a different type hammer block.
H&A put the hammer on an eccentric cam, so it lowered to contact the frame-mounted firing pin when the trigger was held back, but rose to the safe position when the trigger was released.
Jim
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