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I published an 18-page article in the last HBSA Journal (Dec. 2018, - Volume 4, No. 10), titled "The Origins and Development of the .375 Nitro Express Lee-Speed Sporting Rifle." It has a good deal of information on how/why/when this cartridge was offered in the Lee sporting rifles. You can contact the HBSA for a copy.

Much of the material was taken from my draft of the .375 chapter from the work-in-progress Lee-Speed book, but I discovered some new things while sorting it all out for the article. In researching the article, I made use of 23 Lee-Speed rifles in .375 that I was able to examine to some extent (there were over 100 additional rifles known only from records and ledgers that I was not able to examine)---only two of these were from H&H. Although the article has color photos of .375 Lees from Greener, Manton, and BSA, I was unable to secure permission to use photos of the two H&H examples.

One interesting thing I realized during the research was that H&H never advertised the Lee rifle in .375 (at least not in my long search of gun retail ads and catalogues), although it is clear that they sold them. This might seem odd considering that H&H invented the .375 -2 1/2-inch cartridge in 1899, but makes sense when you realize that they intended it for the Mannlicher magazine rifle, and also for more expensive single-shot and double rifles.

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yumatsepside --- I would love to see or learn about the markings on that very nice scoped rifle. Can you help me out?

Juglansregia -- do you still own the wood from this rifle? I would love to compare it with the Lee-Speed furniture from some other gunmakers who deviated from the BSA standard.

Thanks guys!

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Researching Lee Speeds and all commercial Lee Enfields. If you have data to share or questions, please send me a PM.

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