I thought this gun, which is owned by my Son In Law, might be of interest. It is an unusual mechanism that didn't actually work very well, which I guess is the reason you don't see many of them. It was obviously an experimental or transitional mechanism before they had fully worked out the 'standard' hammerless mechanisms. It has an underleaver which pushes downwards to unlock the barrels and cock the hammers, rather like the martini henry rifle, but they hadn't got the mechanical advantage quite right. If you fire both barrels it is a real struggle to push the leaver down hard enough to cock both hammers. If you fire just one barrel it is fine, but both is a struggle. To aid cocking the hammers there are side cocking leavers which can be used as well. These leavers can also be used to 'de cock' the gun and make it safe. In the world moving from good old hammerguns, which could be rendered safe by lowering the hammers, to a world where every gun went around full cocked all the time this would have appealed to the safety conscious 'oldtimers'
The other interesting feature of this gun is the safety leaver - it works the opposite way round to the conventional ones. If you think about it it makes total sense to those used to hammer guns - you pull them back to activate the mechanism so why not pull back the safety to achieve the same result. My guess is that that like so many shooting variations which were possibly used to get round patent rules the rest of the manufacturers adopted the opposite direction - but that is only a guess.
As you would expect from me it is a Perrins of Worcester!!!
