doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Early days of England's best gunmakers

Come on guys this is interesting stuff here, no other firearm can even approach the history of the London firms everyone knows that!!
Except maybe Winchester!!

Hmmmm, you had to pick E.M. Reilly didn't you!

A small reference doesn't help much though, "When he first went to Africa in 1871, Selous took along, 'a small double breech-loading rifle' made by Reilly's of Oxford Street".
I'm still looking!

Treblig-

Interesting stuff.

I wonder what a gun "..in the rough.." was. How rough? If you're dealing with forgings, then you're a long way from a gun. If you're dealing with parts that still need to be completed, fitted, engraved, etc, then you are still a long way from a gun.

If a person could take these rough or raw parts and turn them into a gun, then I'm sure you were qualified to call yourself a gunmaker.

And if these quotes are all from around 1814, aren't you talking about a different era of gunmaking in the UK? I don't think the sporting trade really took off until near the end of the percussion era - say 1860.

Before that, I wonder how many "gunmakers" were serving the sporting market. It wouldn't surprise me if there was much less demand for sporting guns at that time.

OWD

The book, "Shotguns and Gunsmiths" by the late Geofrey Boothroyd,contains agreat deal of information on John Dickson and the Dickson family.

B****** is British vernacular,verging on obscene,[refers to the male genitals]. Used by the uncouth, to express disbelief or lack of comprehension of a particular event or statement. Pleased to say it is not used by Canadians.

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

You're right and I agree with you OWD but it seems that workers who supplied guns 'in the rough' would not or could not or, more importantly, were not trained to, 'finish' the gun whereas the London makers took the rough stock and because they were trained in finishing brought the rough piece to its final complete form.
That's just speculation on my part but that seems reasonable. Referring back to Holland & Holland, prior to building their factory it would seem they took forgings that had been rough out into shape and with their workers finished the gun to its highest standard. These rough forgings would be almost impossible to track down or why would it matter who roughed out the forging.

But the EM Reilly's and William Evan's of the world that's a different story there has to be a way to track down the actual maker. There as to be a maker's mark someplace on that firearm proving the actual maker.

Birmingham has always had an adequate supply of craftsmen able to finish guns to best work standards, both in-workers and out-workers. Keep in mind that there are many routes to get from forgings and blanks to finished gun; rough forging, machined forging, rough finished forging, barreled action, gun in-the-white, finished gun. The trade used all routes as far as I can tell at one time or another.

In the case of H&H, they seem to have gone from bought-in guns to their own complete factory. There was most likely a considerable series of steps from bought-in to factory. Older small shops seem to have gone from bench made guns to buying in at some level. Younger shops seem to have started at a more nearly finished to finished gun. Vendor shops seem to have usually had a service shop. Depending on work load and skill of on-the-books help, they likely bought in guns at some level of completion to provide for slack time work. Out-workers were available to do any work the shop was incapable of doing on its own. Very few, if any, of the brands have done it one way exclusively.