Lot 534S2
A pair of 12-bore easy-opening single-trigger sidelock ejector guns by Boss & Co., no. 4757/8 In their leather motorcase
18 May 2017, 14:00 BST
London, KnightsbridgeSold for £5,625 inc. premium
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A pair of 12-bore easy-opening single-trigger sidelock ejector guns by Boss & Co., no. 4757/8
The ribs, toplevers and forend-tips numbered '1' and '2' in gold, the action-bars engraved Boss's Patent Ejector, best bouquet and foliate-scroll engraving, cocking-indicators, some hardening-colour, the figured stock (No. 1 a replacement) and highly-figured stock (No. 2) (shortened) with leather cheek-pieces, the chopper-lump barrels with game-ribs engraved Boss & Co., 73 St. James's Street, London, (No. 1 missing bead foresight)
Weight 6lb. 6oz., 14¼in. stocks, 29in. barrels, all approx. I.C., 2½in. chambers, London nitro reproof (No. 1 right barrel-thickness at 18 thou, No. 2 barrel-thicknesses at 19- and 19 thou)
In their leather motorcase
Weight 6lb. 6oz., 14¼in. stocks, 29in. barrels, all approx. I.C., 2½in. chambers, London nitro reproof (No. 1 right barrel-thickness at 18 thou, No. 2 barrel-thicknesses at 19- and 19 thou)
In their leather motorcase
Footnotes
The makers have kindly confirmed that the guns were completed in 1901 for George Forbes Esq.
It seems very likely that this was George Forbes (1849-1936) a Scottish inventor, astronomer, professor and explorer. Born in Edinburgh in 1849, Forbes was educated at Edinburgh Academy, the University of St. Andrews, Christ's College and St. Catherine's College, Cambridge.
In 1872 he was appointed Professor of Natural Philosophy at Anderson's University Glasgow, and after two years led a British expedition to Hawaii to observe the transit of Venus. He returned to Scotland via Peking and St. Petersburg, crossing the Gobi desert and Siberia in 1875. As a result of this journey, Forbes was appointed the only British war correspondent with the Russian army during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877, reporting for The Times for which he was awarded the Russian Order of St. George.
In 1880 Forbes moved to London and for the next two decades devoted himself to electrical power engineering. He was commissioned to report on how the City and South London Railway should be powered and recommended electricity. In time the entire London Underground network would follow his recommendation.
In 1881 he became manager of the British Electric Light Company, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1887. He was also Fellow of the Royal Society of Engineers.
Between 1903 and 1906 Forbes worked with the Admiralty studying techniques of gunnery and developing a range-finder that was still in use by the Navy at the outset of the WWII. During WWI he was involved in devising methods of signalling for submarines.
In 1906 he returned to Scotland and lectured on Astronomy at the Royal Technical College in Glasgow