Opened up this Philco, and what the.....??

[Kamakiri]

Okay, I've seen my share of bad repairs and unusual repairs, but this one takes the cake.

Opened up the bottom of this early 30s Philco console radio I'm redoing for a friend. For filtering, it's got a pair of 8 uF caps as you'd expect, but underneath the chassis plate I find this, once the ancient cloth black tape is unraveled.

A pair of 10 uF 450V caps with pilot lights wired into them on the + side. I'm assuming this is for some kind of isolation, but why???

The only thing that I can think of is a possible short in the power transformer? I have no idea. Anyone ever seen something like this?