Hmmmm, you had to pick E.M. Reilly didn't you!
In his book BEST GUNS Michael McIntosh makes a passing reference to Reilly in a list of turn of the century "London Gunmakers" who used Harry Kell for their engraving. Terry Wieland (sp?) recently published an article about his Reilly in GRAY'S and referred to him as an "obscure London gunmaker".
Nigel Brown wrote that EM Reilly was the son of a gunmaker and worked with his father in the 1840's and that he made airguns from 1848-1860. Further that EM continued under several Reilly company names untill 1917, when Reilly was absorbed by Charles Riggs and Co which in turn ceased trading in 1966. There do not seem to be any patents issued in his name. His heyday seems to have been the 1880's. E.M. apparantly died in 1898
Do a google search on the name and you'll turn up a multitude of different varieties of guns bearing the Reilly name. Rifles, pistols, big-bores, and sxs's ranging from underlevers, to sidelocks to pedestrian boxlocks like mine. Some, like the Colt 1851 and Trantor percussion pistols were obviously just bought in and marked with the Reilly name.
Michael Petrov once posted that there is no record of any Reilly factory, and that the guns and rifles were sourced from Birmingham.
That's all I know. Sounds like a merchant instead of a maker to me...Geo
