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I just bought a well used but nice Army & Navy 12 gauge in one of the heaviest factory cases I have ever seen, The previous owner or the auction had researched the gun and supplied 3 pages of factory records showing the gun history. These were from the University of Glasgow from records marked as, I believe, Frasure records. There are some interesting facts in the pages concerning this gun.

First, I don't know if Frasure supplied guns to A&N and wondered if anyone knew this to be the case. Secondly, the page contained three types of guns.

The first three are marked via hand written notes as 12 ga Fig 500 A&D Dbl ejector ball guns with 28" barrels.These carry guard numbers 68110-68112. The barrel numbers are from the1145xx range. These were invoiced 1-11-35 and sold from 31-1-36 to 8-24-36.

The next group were 20 near identical guns invoiced between 7-3-23 and 18-9-23. Eighteen of these were sold between May and September of 1923. The last two were not sold until 14-8-42 and 20-9-42. They somehow stayed in inventory exactly 19 years and were sold in Calcullata; one to A D R Wilson and one to the Commisioner of Police Arms. Guard numbers were from 68113 to 68132 with barrel numbers between 96280 and 96769. They are noted to be of the No. 300 design,some with 28" barrels but more with 30". A side note states
that they have, I believe, "complementary ejectors and Xbolt".

The last entry is an FN hammerless ejector gun with guard number 68133, invoiced on 19-2-20. It was sold to GPM Nightengale on 4-8-20.

All the guns on the double page sold for 25 English pounds except the last FN which was sold for 24 English pounds.

These are double paged ledger entries with the only thing printed being the column headings and the guard numbers which are engraved behind the bow and are printed sequentially through, apparently, the entire ledger. This seems to be the controlling number for record keeping with the barrel numbers being randomly matched within each lot.

The subject of this becoming longer post is the first gun in the series of 20 on the second invoice, number 68113 guard. There is a long note written above this line that states that this gun is to have engraved barrels with a barrel weight of 2# 12 3/4 ozs. It was also marked "less yeabor Lun,Special". This is of course incorrect but is my interpretation of what appears to be a well written note. The significant thing is that it appears to have been Special ordered with lightweight barrels that are engraved. All the other 19 guns have barrels that weighed within 1 oz of 3# 2 oz, making them roughly 6 oz lighter than the others. This gun still sold for the same 25 English pounds.

Part of this may have been due to the buyer. He was Sir Edward Farquhar Buzzard who was Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford University and was a personal physician to King George VI and later his brother Edward. He later became a Baron. He bought the gun for delivery to his son Sir Anthony Wass Buzzard. Anthony went to prep school and then to the Royal Naval College. He joined the Royal Navy at age 13 in 1915 as a Midshipman during WWI. By 1919 at the age of 17 he was an officer aboard the Battleship Iron Duke. He served until 1954 by which time he was an Admiral and was serving as Director of Naval Intelligence.

I am presuming that because the gun was invoiced on March 7, 1923 and delivered on May 18, 1923 it was special ordered for Anthony's 21st birthday on April 28, 1923. What better gift for a young Naval officer serving around the world than a special shotgun fully cased.

My reason for this post was trying to deterimine if:

Did Frasure supply guns to Army & Navy? The fact that the tags on the data indicate that these are Frasure records, along with them being in the University of Glasgow archives leads me to believe that they were a supplier and maybe shipper.

Does anyone know if A&N or Frasure guns are marked with sequential guard numbers and nonmatching barrel numbers? The ledgers seem to be designed for that system.

Did A&N operate on a supplier fulfilled order system on ordered items? These records seem to indicate that these are manufacturing records. The ledgers were preprinted with the guard number as the parts were made and then the other columns filled in as the guns were allocated to a sales outlet. Note that three guns were ordered in 1935 and sold in 1936.The next 20 guns were ordered in 1923 and sold that year with the exception that two were held in inventory and shipped by freight to Calcullcuta 19 years later. It looks like one explanation would be that A&N would order the guns to be built and they were then held by the manufacturer until they were informed of a shipping address for a customer.

Finally, does anyone have access to Army & Navy catalogs or Frasure catalogs of the period that would give the details of Model 300 or Model 500 guns?

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Hi AGS,

Just a couple of thoughts: I expect you know that the Army and Navy Co-operative Society was started as a wholesaler of all types of goods for military personnel ONLY. Later it was opened up to the Civil Service employees, and later still just became a normal store with department stores in major British cities, such as Guildford (near Bisley) where i would go shopping in the 1980s and 1990s.

This group of stores began to lose money and was bought out by a rival group, the House of Fraser (not Frasure) based in Glasgow, so this is how the records have ended up in Glasgow, Scotland.

The Army & Navy Gun department certainly ordered guns in in batches and then sold them on when an officer asked for one, hence the ledgers. This is how their their prices were 25% or so less than 'proper' retail gunmakers.

Good luck with your further researches.

HB

PS:

I forgot to say that I have the reprinted copy of the 1907 A&N catalogue, which only has three pages of guns ( out of 1280 pages!) None of these guns have a number. Perhaps someone else has access to a later copy of the catalogue?

HB