The closest I have is Python 3.3, but this times out properly for me:

>>> from http.client import HTTPConnection
>>> import socket
>>> socket.setdefaulttimeout(10)
>>> h = HTTPConnection("192.168.1.84")
>>> h.request("GET", "/")
>>> h.getresponse()
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "C:\Python33\lib\http\client.py", line 1147, in getresponse
    response.begin()
  File "C:\Python33\lib\http\client.py", line 358, in begin
    version, status, reason = self._read_status()
  File "C:\Python33\lib\http\client.py", line 320, in _read_status
    line = str(self.fp.readline(_MAXLINE + 1), "iso-8859-1")
  File "C:\Python33\lib\socket.py", line 297, in readinto
    return self._sock.recv_into(b)
socket.timeout: timed out

I suggest you either try to come up with a recipe to reproduce this with plain http.client, or look into whether the Requests package supports using the default socket timeout setting.