Gene, keep up the good work! I’ll definitely order your Reilly book.

Back to the discussion. Defining exactly when the pinfire came and went is a tricky proposition. The only certain date is 1836, when Casimir Lefaucheux patented the pinfire cartridge in France. There is the anecdote whereby a Lefaucheux gun of the 1836 type was said to have been imported into Britain in 1844 by the noted firm of Wilkinson and Company of Pall Mall, London, successors in business to the great Henry Nock. The story goes that despite the reputation of the firm, no one could be persuaded to use the gun.

It is not unreasonable to think that someone in Britain would have brought back a Lefaucheux-type breechloader prior to 1851, together with the necessary cartridges. Lieutenant-Colonel Peter Hawker’s views on the gun at the time probably deterred many, but perhaps not all. There would not have been any impetus for Benjamin Houllier to improve the pinfire cartridge if it was not in demand. Contemporary sources affirm that by the 1850s all French gunmakers were producing pinfire guns, so availability of the guns and cartridges would be easy for anyone crossing the Channel.

The year 1851 is important, for the pinfire gun and pepperbox exhibited at the Great Exhibition of the Industry of all Nations in London’s Crystal Palace, and illustrated in The Illustrated London News in its 5 July edition. The timeline of what follows next is not so clear. Joseph Lang offered his version of the pinfire sometime afterwards, in 1852 or 1853. The earliest record I can find is for 1855, but clearly Lang (and perhaps Reilly and Blanch) was producing them prior to this. There may also have been an influx of Continental guns to meet the demand. Sportsmen were using British or Continental pinfires, otherwise there would not have been any sizeable reaction to the letter in The Field in December 1856, which started the heated fanboy debate over the merits of muzzle-loaders versus pinfires that led to the two Field trials of 1858 and 1859.



We are still not talking large numbers of guns in circulation, as makers were not equipped to produce large quantities of bespoke sporting guns, and demand would have been limited to land-owners with free time, and competitive pigeon shooters. Game at this time was walked-up. It was the quick-loading feature of the breech-loader that enabled the development of driven shoots, which began to appear at shooting estates in the late 1850s. Looking at a number of important maker’s records around the late 1850s, it was not unusual for 100 serial numbers to be used in a year, which might include sporting guns, rifles and pistols. Even assuming that more than half might be shotguns, this is still a limited number of makers producing a limited number of guns for a limited number of shooting opportunities. With the advent of driven shooting in the social calendar and the emergence of railways to take sportsmen to distant shooting grounds, it is not surprising to see the demand for pinfires increasing throughout the 1860s, with more and more makers meeting that demand. Excluding makers identified as makers of rifles and pistols only, I’ve counted over 900 gunmakers in business for at least part of the period 1855-1870 that might have built a pinfire sporting gun. Of course, there will be some of these that ceased business while never having made a breech-loader, and others that may have only built centre-fire guns which appeared at the same time; what is certain is that from a handful of mostly-London makers in the mid-1850s the number grew to several hundred makers by the end of the 1860s.

Talking specific examples, Boss & Co. built 735 pinfires between 1858 and 1871; John Dickson & Son produced 430 pinfires starting in 1859, and only 5 were built in 1875. Unfortunately most surviving record or order books simply distinguish between breech-loaders and muzzle-loaders, without specifying what type of breech-loader was delivered, either pin- or centre-fire. These numbers agree with the 1871 observations of William Wellington Greener that 100 centre-fire guns were being made for every pin-fire (indicating that pinfires were still being built).

It is worth looking at contemporary writings. Not surprisingly, John B. Johnson’s 1851 book The Gun and How To Use It makes no mention of breech-loaders, and Robert Blakey’s Shooting: A Manual of Practical Information on this Branch of British Field Sports (1854) also makes no mention of breech-loaders. The second edition of John Henry Walsh’s book Manual of British Rural Sports (1856) mentions and illustrates Lang’s pinfire, and adds: “The advantages of this gun are manifest, and to all those who value rapid and safe loading as highly as it deserves, I should strongly recommend a trial or it, since it appears to me to supply a great desideratum, and if as good in practice as it appears to me to be theoretically perfect, its invention will be as great an era in gun-making as that of the detonator itself. Time, however, and time alone, must decide its merits.” The same text was repeated in later editions (e.g. the 5th edition of 1861)

J. D. Dougall wrote in the conclusion of his 1857 book Shooting Simplified: A Concise Treatise on Guns and Shooting: “Another novelty is the rapid introduction of breechloading firearms. These have been in common use in France for the last fifteen years, and are said to have stood the test of that period. It is yet immature to decide upon their merits. They are strongly advocated as excellent by many sportsmen, but the strength of our powder is so much greater than that of the French or Belgian, that they have still to pass through a severe ordeal before receiving the full confidence of British sportsmen. How long the jointing at the breech end may continue to withstand the tremendous vibrations of our heavy charges, time alone can show.” He also added: “One of the very best judges of firearms, a gentleman of scientific attainments in these matters, for whom the author has had the honour to make many guns, writes to him in these terms, "In a few years muzzle loaders will be, as flint locks are now, in the category of things that were."”

In Dougall’s 1875 book, Shooting: Its Appliances, Practice and Purpose, written largely to promote his Lockfast design, he wrote: “In the year 1856 was introduced from the Continent that most daring alteration—the sporting breechloader—which has carried the day against its old competitor, in so far as sportsmen in this country are concerned, although for rough, outlying, or foreign work, the muzzle-loader may, for a time, hold its own. That the breech-loaders, as originally introduced, wore defective, and open to many objections, cannot be gainsaid ; and although, on their construction, it was plain that they might be equal to the requirements of the weak gunpowder and light charging of the Continent, still they were not equal to our strong powder and severe work. This proved itself by their rapid deterioration at the jointing, and it soon became clear that that jointing was insufficient. As is not uncommon, the ingenuity of the foreign inventor has been improved upon in this country. Our mechanists, while less inventive, surpass those of the Continent in carrying out new modes of construction—in all branches of manufacture—to a satisfactory end.”

From these contemporary writings it looks like mid-1850 is when the breech-loader, the pinfire, starts to attract attention from the few in use at the time. By 1856 sportsmen are being encouraged to try them, and in 1857 terms like ‘rapid introduction’ are being used; by the 1870s no one is questioning the breech-loader, but this includes the centre-fire, which also appeared in Britain around 1856. The Trials of 1858 and 1859 undoubtedly popularized and promoted the pinfire, and the lapse of Henry Jones’ patent for the double screw grip action in September 1862 meant it was a lot easier for any maker to built strong guns without paying royalties. Demand for pinfires decreased towards the end of the 1860s as the centre-fire started to dominate, and by the early 1870s demand for pinfires dwindled to just a few. It was in the late 1860s that dual-fire guns emerged, which could fire both pinfire and centrefire cartridges. This practice did not continue for very long.

A shooter with a pinfire gun faced one of three choices in the 1870s: continue using it, converting it to centre-fire, or relegating it to a corner of the gun room. A gun represented a sizeable investment, so only the very well-heeled could set a usable gun aside and buy another; 25 guineas was more than an annual salary for many, and the best makers could command prices of 50-60 guineas for a pinfire. Cartridges were widely available, so if fashion was not a great concern, it made sense to keep on using it until it needed replacement. Conversion to centre-fire was not as complicated as conversion of a muzzle-loader to pinfire (again, the latest Double Gun Journal illustrates one of those), and without a doubt many pinfires were converted. Perhaps not surprisingly, a collector of pinfires will encounter pieces either completely worn out from years of hard use, or fairly intact ones where the owner could afford to retire them. While few new pinfires were being made in the early 1870s, I expect pinfires were commonly used in the field then and into the 1880s. They were certainly popular in Europe into the beginning of the 20th Century.