William Anson was christened on the 2nd of August 1830 at Saint Peter or Collegiate Church, Wolverhampton. By the time of is marriage to Caroline Taylor in 1858 he had followed his father Edwin into the locksmithing trade. When his son Edwin George Anson was born in 1863 William is listed as a Gun Sight Maker. William Anson was “established” in 1869 according to his son’s trade label.
In 1875 William Anson (then foreman of the Westley Richards Gun-Action department) and John Deeley patented their eponymous boxlock design. William Anson was almost certainly the inventor of the famed boxlock while John Deeley who was Westley Richards managing director at the time was management’s representative. Typically what would happen if a workman developed some marketable mechanical improvement while in firms employ was that the firm simply appropriated the design. For example in 1869 “Westley Richards” patented a falling block rifle in which the tumbler formed part of the striker. As H. J. Blanch has pointed out in A Century of Guns, “This arrangement adapted to a double gun, with the novel feature of connecting the tumblers by means of the forward extension of them, with levers operated by the forepart, re-cocking the locks, was patented by Anson and Deeley and introduced by Westley Richards in 1875.”
It is not difficult to imagine the mechanically proficient Anson (Deeley’s background lay elsewhere) arguing that his 1869 rifle should have provided him with some remuneration. And it may have been that when Westley Richards’s managing director saw the full potential for the 1875 boxlock design he agreed. This would account for the name change from “Westley Richards” in 1869 to “Anson & Deeley” in 1875 on the two patents; the former clearly having inspired the latter.
Admittedly there is some speculation here but the subsequent bitterness of William Anson’s descendents who felt that the inventor had been inadequately compensated is telling. “There is no doubt that by Edwin’s death in 1936 there was a very bad feeling towards John Deeley and the implication is that both William and his son Edwin did not receive the correct monetary recompense for their inventions” wrote one in 2002 adding “…it does seem a little strange that on her death in 1939, Edwin’s widow was reduced to living in a small flat above a shop an left only ₤125 in her will.”
Between December 1872 and May 1888 William Anson registered 10 British gun patents under his own name or with a partner. It is unlikely we will ever know how many patents he contributed to in the name of his employers. He died on the 28th of May, 1889 at 6 Church Road, Moseley of “cirrhosis of the liver, teterus (sic) and general anascara.”
Douglas Tate
Editor at Large
SHOOTING SPORTSMAN
The Magazine of Wingshooting & Fine Guns
