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Thank you all for the comments. First, could I ask that you all please reread the history on p.54, the whole thing...not just select portions. A lot of the history has to do with dating the Reilly guns - moves to new shops, changes in labels, taking on new partners, etc. And where it is controversial I say so.

If you have questions on the sourcing of a particular sentence please post it here and I'll answer why I wrote the conclusions as I did. This will only make it better.

In the meantime I'm working on an "illustrated" version of the history. It will have "footnote markers" which will reference all the source materials, and include historical photos to put things into context along with comments on a separate document. Both could be opened and a reader can toggle back and forth between them which might explain things a bit better. Most of these points have been addressed at one time or another; however, this is a long line and it's hard to go back through the whole thing.

A couple of the above comments were addressed before:

-- Reilly was not a member of the Worshipful Company of Gunmakers. There are references to his guns being proofed there and since virtually all Reilly guns were proofed in London, not a surprise.

-- Employment at Gun makers in the 1800's was highly cyclical. Most large Birmingham gunmakers could not tell you how many workers were employed at any one time. There are no Reilly records....none.

-- I have looked at sales advertisements for barrel borers, foot lathes, etc, especially in 1897 when he closed 16 New Oxford Street and Feb 1903 when he closed 277 Oxford street. But it is too wide a category to turn up anything definitive. There is nothing like the London press article on the bankruptcy sale of Manton's stock and tools from 1826.

--The 1851 census listed the number of firms employing x amount of workers in London and this was used in some sociological pieces (previously posted). Most London companies were quite small. I have been unable, however to identify the details. There may be more information available someplace. But I doubt it will be useful.

-- As for the 1861, 71, 81 census, until 1891 it was pretty rudimentary. It asked "occupation" but not where a person worked. If you were an employer it asked how may workers you employed. That's it. You either accept the 1881 census data as given at that moment to the census taker or reject it. If you reject the Reilly data, then you have to reject just about all the other employers who responded. I've addressed this several times with examples...especially the search for a couple of Reilly's shop managers John Baker (1861) and Ruben Hambling (1881).

-- There are engravings and photographs of Reilly's buildings in London just not identifying them as such. I'm working with the Paris archives to pin down 2 rue Scribe and 29 rue du Faubourg. The Reilly building at 277 Oxford street was much taller than the current building. Reilly's son Montegu fell or jumped from the top story and killed himself in 1895. Reilly actually lived on the top floor of the building. J.C. was a property owner and had his own house when he was running the company.
. . . . .-- And by the way Purdey has ZERO photos of their workshop, sales shop and administrative office at 314 1/2 Oxford Street. I forwarded to them a photo of the street which at least sort of shows what the building looked like. And they were there for 50 years till 1881.

-- The Reilly advertisements are not "hyped." They are, however, filled with information if you read them carefully.

-- There is not one (1) article from the 19th century that identifies Reilly as a "retailer." None. Zero. On the contrary some of the most famous hunters and explorers used his guns and endorsed them; "The Field" visited his stores and shooting gallery and tested his guns. You have to go up to the 1950's to start to find stuff about Reilly being a "retailer" - and as stated in the introduction, this likely grew out of Riggs having bought the name in 1922.

Please read the history again. If you have doubts, that's fine - list them in detail. I'm continuing to work on various aspects but am still pretty proud of what has been accomplished so far.

Last edited by Argo44; 11/28/21 07:43 AM.
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