"William Moore & Company," Bond Strreet, London, 11 Gauge Percussion Shotgun, Outstanding Condition
Description:
SOLD PENDING ARRIVAL OF FUNDS
This quality English double-gun was bought by my great grandfather for fowling in the early 1870s. Progresssive farmer, then later both schoolteacher and co-founder of the Huron Valley Bank, George Benton wrote several times of the pleasure he took in this firearm. As a boy, George Benton had been impressed by Prince Albert, Victoria's husband, and knew that this was the marque favored by Albert.
It is a "William Moore & Co." percussion shotgun, 11 gauge, moderately heavy, with a "London Fine Twist" Damascus barrel, renewed by Brad Bachelder in 2000 and just about perfect.
I have always assumed George Benton bought the gun new between 1870 and 1874, when his diaries first mentioned his successes with the gun in duck hunting. The marks on the underside of the barrel support this belief. The crowned VBP proof mark pictured was used by the Birmingham Gun Proof House from 1854. This, plus the absence of the "Not for Ball" mark that appeared on Damascus barrels in 1875, places the gun between 1854 and 1874.
In 1999, reading the Double Gun Journal article mentioned below, I noted Franck's tribute to Brad Bachelder, "a master gunmaker in Grand Rapids" that rebrowned Franck's own William Moore. My own Moore was fundamentally in excellent condition, but in one spot on the barrel there was quarter's worth of surface rust, and the original ramrod was missing. I sent it to Bachelder, who rebrowned the barrel, case hardened lock and metal furnishings, and replicated the ramrod.
The price was substantial ($800, and the bill accompanies the gun). The result is remarkable. My daughters being entirely uninterested in guns, even family guns, I am offering it to someone who wants an unusually fine example of the percussion double guns that made England famous in the Victorian era.
WILLIAM MOORE, GUNMAKER
As Michael S. Franck tells Moore's story in The Double Gun Journal in Winter, 1999, "William Moore was the son of Charles Moore, one of the foremost gunmakers in his day who ran a shop from 1780-1835 at 77 St. James Street. This was in the heart of the London gun quarter that produced the finest gunmakers in the world during the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early part of the twentieth Century...
"Moore was apprenticed in the shop of the famous Joseph Manton, who ran and leased a shop at 315 Oxford Street. First as a stocker [who made and fitted stocks], Moore worked with other craftsmen who later became the first generation of modern gunmakers -- James Purdey, Joseph Lang, William Greener, Charles Lancaster, and others... A contemporary once described Moore as a 'very ingenious workman and an excellent shot...'"
Legendary sportsman Colonel Peter Hawker, despite the fact he was wed to Lancaster's guns, regularly praised Moore. In his famous "Instructions to Young Sportsman" he wrote, "Also Mr. Charles Moore, who was an old hand at Joe's [Joseph Manton's], and knew, to a hair, how to fit a man's shoulder to a gun. I have often stood over him when he was a journeyman, and no man better pleased me with a job. Depend on it he will do well [as a gunmaker], and get to the top of the tree... 'Billy Moore' is a right-hand man with the 'knobs,' or crack pigeon shooters, and their patronage is a host in itself toward a good lift in business." (p.4 in the 1830 edition.) Hawker was on good terms with both the Duke of Clarence, who became King William IV, and also Victoria's husband Prince Albert. It is possible that Hawker's opinion contributed to the fact that Moore later became both "gunmaker to William IV" and "gunmaker to Prince Albert."
Before 1833 Moore did strike out on his own, selling guns under William Moore and Company at 78 Edgware Road in London. Between 1847 and 1853, he partnered with William Gray at the Edgware Road shop, and the firm was rechristened William Moore and William Grey Gunmakers. Albert again awarded the credit "gunmaker to Prince Albert" to the Moore and Gray partnership. The partners and their employees then moved to Bond Street, Mayfair, the center of the best gunmakers in England at the time. (Old Bond Street and New Bond Street are one, by the way, the old distinction kept only in the postal addresses.) There the business was again titled "William Moore & Company," although the partnership with Gray persisted.
There is speculation but no certainty on the death of William Moore, but most consider it likely soon before 1870, although it also may be signaled by the 1873 renaming of the company to William Moore, Gray & Co. in 1873. In any case, it is certain that Gray survived Moore, and continued to produce fine shotguns at the Bond Street address, with their crew of internal craftsmen, outworkers, and apprentices. Among the those who worked for Moore and Gray of 43 Old Bond Street were Henry Atkin jr., son of Henry Atkin, the first craftsman Purdey had hired when he set up shop. The younger Atkin was first apprenticed to his father, at Purdey, and then worked for Moore and Gray from 1862 to approximately 1874. (See G.T. Teasdale-Buckell, in his Experts on Guns and Shooting, who actually interviewed the younger Atkin.) When Atkin set up his own shop, the firm he founded eventually became Atkin, Grant & Lang Ltd.
A Moore and Gray apprentice who became particularly important in the trade was Frederick Beesley, whose company also survives today. Among several important innovations, he invented the so-called "self opening action" that was purchased by Purdey. As the Beesley company tells his story:
"In 1861, upon reaching his 15th birthday, Frederick secured an [10 year] apprenticeship with the London gunmaking firm of William Moore & Grey, indentured to William Grey, at 43 Old Bond Street. It is probable that Moore died during Frederick’s apprenticeship. Grey however was a canny businessman who had helped Joseph Manton run his firm. He passed on to Frederick some of those skills that would prove so useful to him when he came to run his own business. Meanwhile, Frederick was also learning to build best quality sporting guns and rifles and developing his own mechanical and engineering prowess."
In summary, as Teasdale-Buckall put it, "Thus the various workmen of old Joe Manton were in the next generation the most consumate judges, as well as the greatest salesmen, of London guns. Charles Lancaster, Thomas Boss, James Purdey, and William Moore between them created an epoch in gunmaking."
SOLD
Antique: Yes