doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com E.M. Reilly; History; Chronology; Serial Numbers

UK Archives forwarded copies of the 25 November 1911 incorporation of EM Reilly & Co. into a Limited Liability company and the bankruptcy documents from June 8, 1912. It was hoped that these documents would include an inventory of Reilly properties and assets at the time. Instead there is nothing but legalese.

However, three historical bits can be discerned from them:

1) Herbert Reilly in 1911 had no partners in the business. When the company became Ltd., George Watkinson Roberts, accountant and bankruptcy lawyer, became a partner. It was evident that by autumn 1911 Herbert Reilly knew bankruptcy was coming and positioned the company to protect his private assets.

2) When bankruptcy was declared all the assets went to Roberts to dispose of. This is probably why Reilly made a great effort to sell off all his remaining guns in 1911. In the serial number chart as currently configured some 60+ guns were numbered and sold in 1911 - 4 times the number sold in 1910.

3) IGC history (which was not a bad original effort before the internet - and which stated Reilly made his own guns) commented that Reilly might have leased and moved to 13 High Street, Marylebone fall 1911 before the incorporation of EM Reilly & C0.. These documents mention nothing of this and it is evident Reilly remained at 295 Oxford Street until bankruptcy. 295 was leased to a hat maker in autumn 1912.
(It is possible that Reilly leased the Marylebone building before declaring bankruptcy and moved some of his machinery there; creditors would have been left essentially with an empty building in such a case. So far no way to investigate this possibility has been found).

Edit: I've written Archives asking if there is anyway to find out what was sold out of 295 Oxford Street to satisfy the creditors - assuming the G. Watkinson Roberts would have handled this.

Here are a couple of the documents for the record: