I suppose it could be entered as hearsay for now. And it may be semantics, but I take issue with the term barrel/tube maker in this instance but would accept barrel filer/polisher and barrel borer. There's a reference somewhere that by the early 1870s there weren't any barrel makers in London. And also it may be semantics but no maker made tubes from scratch where they dug the ore, puddled it and rolled out a tube. That's an illusion propagated by the upper rung makers themselves that from the earth they dug the ore and from their shop out rolled the sporting weapon.
I think the serialization had more structure that some ad hoc maker application of a number. Those numbers are there for a specific reason. But you do have a point that the Whitworth-Purdey relationship was stout and Purdey may have set the bar. But this is just one maker, how would the tubes have been distributed to all other makers and to the U.S. of A.(should be some import documentation there).
Kind Regards,
Raimey
rse
