John---

Your rifle exhibits some puzzling features. First, the barrel length at 24 inches is unusual. It does not match any of the standard officer carbines in the BSA catalogues circa 1900. Of course, they could make them to order, but it’s clear from the ledger that Rigby ordered several in this length. It wasn’t a one-off.

Second, several things make it easy to understand why the seller originally assumed this was a cut-down range rifle. It seems to have a chopped full-length Long Lee fore-end, as evidenced by the rear band, the vestigial clearing rod slot, and of course the volley sights. Those are not normally found on a commercial carbine. It also lacks the flattened bolt handle that one often finds on carbines (though there is some variation on this, but that’s another story). Importantly, this carbine has a government inspector’s mark. Why would someone pay to have this carbine government viewed if they were not going to use it in NRA competition? Even more puzzling, why would a government viewer approve such a rifle with his stamp if the rifle did not conform to a standard service pattern? Do you see where I’m going here?

And yet the evidence from the Rigby ledger, which I too have carefully examined, is very clear that this was sold to Low with a 24 inch barrel, and sighted to 1950 yards (with bayonet). The BSA number and the trigger guard match the ledger. (Can you please look at the sights and confirm the maximum range?) However, I think it unlikely that the rifle was modified since Lowe purchased it—the matching numbers and barrel are very strong evidence of originality (meaning that no one converted this to a “range rifle” length in later years—the barrel was 24 inches when Low bought it in 1900, per the ledger).

So… we are left with some theories. Here’s the one I think makes the most sense, and requires the fewest contortions: In the early days of the Boer War, with large numbers of men volunteering for South Africa, gunmakers found it hard to keep up with the demand for officer’s carbines. Perhaps Rigby took commercial Long Lees and altered them to 24 inches. Or perhaps BSA did this before shipping the arms to Rigby. (After all, BSA was already offering 24-inch semi-military carbines with fore-ends exactly like yours at this time, but with sporting grip buttstocks. Considering that ordinary military buttstocks would have been easier (faster) to procure, making up carbines like yours would have made sense, given how many officers were shipping out in Jan-Feb 1900.) This seems a more reasonable theory than someone applying the government view mark in later years. And it matches the odd features of the rifle.

A hasty scan of my specimen data shows models with the 24-inch barrel start to taper off after 1901, so we could assume that supply caught up with demand---the standard commercial offerings with 19 and 21-inch barrels were sufficient, and no Long Lee conversions were necessary. However, I would need to examine the data more carefully before I would stand behind that last statement.
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.264----I will send some info on your Rigby carbine just as soon as I have a spare moment. Best Regards