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Known Reilly shop managers
A follow-up on previous peer-review criticisms of the Reilly History:

In spite of claims from some very knowledgeable contributors on this board, shop managers for London gun makers in the 19th century are not well known except perhaps for the most prestigious of them...Joseph Manton's protégés being the most prominent. There are no Reilly records. However, based on London newspaper articles we're now up to the names of 5 shop managers for Reilly from 1855-1898 including one, the earliest (1855) with a French name (if this is a French name - now unlikely), interestingly just when Reilly began to make center-break breech loaders).

1855. . . .- "Le Gerant" - the contact at the Reilly shop listed in an advertisement for buying a used rifle on consignment. ("Le Gérant" of course means "the manager" in French....thus this may not be a name at all..just another expression of Reilly's francophilia - and that on the eve of the Lefaucheaux center-break pin-fire revolution in UK may be in-and-of itself telling).
1860-65 . - "John Baker" - registered the patent for the 1861 Reilly shell crimper and testified at fraud hearings.
1870 . . . - "Francis Davis" - testified for Reilly at the 1870 hearings for violating UK neutrality in the Franco-Prussian war
1882-85 . - "Ruben Hambling" - likely started out with Reilly in the late 1850's - ran his own gun shop in the midlands than back to Reilly
1897-98 . - "James Curtis" - Testified in a trial re the purchase of a Reilly revolver by an Irish terrorist.

and

1871 . . . .- "M. Poirat" - manager of Reilly store at 2 rue Scribe, Paris, who tried to convince the new 3rd Republic to buy 6,000 Chessapot rifles stored in Birmingham from Reilly (obviously a salesman, not a technician).

There are several young professionals also mentioned in articles - it seems Reilly carefully selected and trained his young apprentices well.
1858-59 . .- "Mr. Bennett," who carefully loaded rounds for the guns used in "The Field" trials of 1858 and 1859.
1862 . . . .- "Mr. McNamara" who was responsible for guiding visitors through the Reilly 1862 London World's Fair exhibit.

It's tough sledding to find more information about these men. Hambling at least has a history - Baker may be identical to a later gun maker in Birmingham (1880's). Reilly was not a prestigious maker - he was the closest thing London had to a gun "factory" - and the gun trade at the time was neither romantic nor artistic to those working on the benches...nor were these men likely to write books.

Plus the gun trade and employment in it was highly cyclical...when a firm was riding high....it added workers.. and vice versa. This is well documented in books on the Birmingham gun trade perviously posted above.

Last edited by Argo44; 03/20/22 08:23 AM.
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