400NitroExpress
(.400 member)
05/01/05 07:24 AM
Re: W.J. Jeffery History

Turner could not have been Jeffery's primary supplier of double rifles. Thomas Turner III became Master of the Birmingham Proof House in 1899 and closed the Birmingham factory soon after. The entries in the Jeffery records in 1907 - 1908 are undoubtedly Turner's last gasp. Turner's outlets in Reading and Newbury were then sold to Cording of Piccadilly and continued to operate under the Turner name, but the guns were retailed, having been built by others in Birmingham. This information is confirmed by Jack Rowe, a gunmaker who worked for Turner. He thought the suggestion that Turner was Jeffery's major source was pretty silly and then mentioned the "roughly 1900" factory closing.

The Leonard firm advertised itself in trade journals as express rifle specialists to the trade. Like P. Webley & Son (later Webley & Scott), Leonard built rifles for a long list retailers - Fraser, Manton, Jeffery, Cogswell, Pape, A. Hollis, etc. This was their stock in trade and they survived until 1965. The shaped back boxlock, as seen in Rusty's photo of the Jeffery .475 No. 2 is a Leonard trade mark of which there were several variations. The upper photo is of the barrels of his A. Hollis & Son .450/.400. He should post a picture of it from the same angle as the Jeffery. These two rifles are virtually identical because they are both from Leonard. The Hollis was simply ordered as a higher grade of the same gun. I've seen copies of the Jeffery records numerous times where someone had obtained such from Holland when researching a particular rifle. As Rusty and Keith state, it is page after page of "H. Leonard" in the "made by" column. Keith noted that the entry for boxlocks usually is "H. Leonard" only and that is my observation as well. I believe these guns to have been built complete by Leonard.

It is true that most (but not all) Jeffery rifles built prior to WWI had Krupp barrels. How this "excludes" Leonard is beyond me. This was due to Leonard, not Jeffery. Leonard rifles built for Jeffery had Krupp barrels, but so did the rifles Leonard built for others. I firmly believe that Leonard used Krupp rifle barrels exclusively until the war. Jeffery did order the first few .600 blanks directly from Krupp in 1901 and those rifles (four, if I remember correctly) were then built by Leonard. But then, since these were the first .600s, Leonard wouldn't have had any tubes in that caliber on hand.

Leonard was definitely Jeffery's primary double rifle supplier. Jeffery's retail volume prior to WWI was tremendous and undoubtedly outstripped the capacity of any one trade maker. I think the more likely explanation for the Turner entries in the Jeffery records is that while Leonard was providing most of the double rifles to Jeffery complete, he was also farming out barreled actions to Turner to finish in order to keep up and these rifles arrived at Jeffery from Turner, instead of Leonard.

No, A. Hollis & Son has no connection to Jeffery. The point Rusty was making was that they got their double rifles from the same maker. No, A. Hollis & Son wasn't an "India based retailer". A. Hollis & Son were successors to W. (William) & E. (Ebeneezer) Hollis, established Birmingham, 1796, Gunmakers to HRH the Duke of Connaught and HE the Viceroy. Yes, they had an outlet in India in the 1880s and 1890s as many other British makers did. They opened an outlet in London in Mincing Lane in 1897 and moved to Victoria Street in 1903 where they remained until 1919.
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