doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com The pinfire game gun

Here's another post before everyone gets busy with weekend festivities, to keep the momentum. Before delving into the various actions that blossomed in the 1860s, I'd like to stick with the first pattern a bit longer.

Finding any pinfire possibly made before 1860 is a real treat in my book. Various authors have proposed that before 1860 there were no more than a few hundred pinfire game guns in Britain, and that makes sense to me. In January 1857 Joseph Lang published a pamphlet in which he claimed to have been using his breech-loader for three years. This meshes well with the story that Edwin Charles Hodges built his breech-loader after the close of the Great Exhibition of 1851, and took it to Lang. By his own account, the first Lang breech-loader might have been produced in 1853, or early 1854. If so, that does not give much time to hand-build and sell a lot of guns. The earliest builders of breech-loaders, from contemporary accounts, were Lang, John Blanch, and Edward Michael Reilly. Blanch built his first pinfire in 1856. Exactly when Reilly might have started is unclear. A few provincial makers might well have started building breech-loaders around this time, but I can' confirm it. Purdey's first pinfire was built in 1858, and Boss & Co., under Stephen Grant, started producing pinfires in 1859, and sold 15 in that year. Before 1860, it was a small number of makers producing a small number of sporting guns, for a shooting public that already owned fine muzzle-loaders. It didn't help that sporting guns were built to last, as shown by the examples in still-usable condition surviving today.

The real business for a gunmaker was in fulfilling military contracts involving thousands of arms, and in cheap-but-serviceable guns as items of trade and barter in distant lands. A firm meeting these demands would have a large in-house capacity, afford water- or steam-powered machinery and factory space, as well as provide work for hundreds of outworkers supplying the trade. Of this type of business operating in the 1850s, I can't think of a better example than Barnett's. John Edward Barnett established his business in London in 1796, stocking pistols for the East India Company. In 1842 the firm was recorded as John Edward Barnett & Sons, in business at 134 Minories until 1859, and additionally at Brewhouse Lane, Wapping, from 1860 to 1874. Barnett's guns were usually simply marked "Barnett." Barnett supplied flint and percussion trade guns for the North American fur trade (notably to the Hudson's Bay Company and the North West Company), and Barnett was also the most prolific of English manufacturers associated with the American Confederacy, having made and sold to them thousands of Pattern 1853 Enfield Rifle-Muskets and P-1856 cavalry carbines.

With such a profitable business in martial and trade arms, you wouldn't think Barnett would bother with the tiny sporting gun market -- but they did, though Barnett sporting guns are rarely recorded. Perhaps with the emergence of the pinfire breech-loader in the 1850s the firm saw an opportunity to expand its trade, though in practice it never did go in that direction. They nevertheless sold the gun shown below under their name, but whether they made the gun from a barrelled action, or bought a ready-made gun and added their name to it, is anyone's guess. As to who would have wanted a Barnett-signed pinfire, rather than a gun from a respected sporting gun maker, is even more of a head-scratcher.

The gun is a 12-bore, number 7076. It has the Lang-type single-bite forward under-lever with assisted-opening stud, and the action bar is signed "Joseph Brazier". The back-action locks are signed "Barnett", and the top rib is simply signed "Barnett London". The 28 7/8" barrels are marked with London proofs. The gun is decorated with bold foliate-scroll engraving, and I particularly like the detail on the classic "dolphin" hammers. It has seen hard use and a few screws look to have been replaced, but it is in generally good order for what may be an 1850s pinfire. The bores are moderately pitted, and the gun weighs 6 lb 11 oz.








While the Brazier name is welcome information, it does not clarify how much of the gun was provided, or made, by this firm. Joseph Brazier was recorded as a gunlock maker and gun and pistol maker at The Ashes, Brickkiln Street, Wolverhampton, since at least 1827, and in the 1861 census he was listed as a master gunmaker employing 70 men and 20 boys. His firm might have provided the barrelled action and the locks, or it might have made the entire gun to Barnett's wishes. Brazier locks have always been in particularly high regard, and the locks on the Barnett still speak beautifully.

I did consider whether it could have been made by another "Barnett," but there were no others in the 19th Century that I could find. I also considered whether it was a spurious naming, as simply having "London" on a rib without a street address usually sends up a red flag -- but such guns are usually of a lesser quality (they probably wouldn't have Joseph Brazier parts), the name might be misspelled (eg. "Barnet"), the proof marks might be suspect, and so on. Such guns tended to show up in the 1870s and 1880s, and not in the 1850s when so few craftsmen were able to action a breech-loading gun to begin with. And at the end of the day, why choose a maker such as Barnett to plagiarize, when many other names would be better used in a scam? Last year at Holt's auction a superb percussion double-barrelled sporting gun signed Barnett was sold, so the firm did indeed make a small number of sporting guns. I've not encountered any other, and I'd appreciate hearing if anyone out there has encountered Barnett sporting guns.