Frederick Beesley: A Patent Success

The Brits may not always have been top gun for their sense of style with cars, clothes or comestibles, but in one area they have excelled for 200 years: the shotgun. In terms of inventiveness and execution, the London sidelock is a world-beater, and it has been exported and imitated all over the planet. Not that concept and quality are necessarily the province of a single gunmaker. The gun that Geoffrey Boothroyd has called “one of the most famous double shotgun actions of all time” and “the most consistently sought after shotgun in the world” owes its concept to Frederick Beesley and its execution to James Purdey. Both men were metaphoric descendents of Joseph Manton. Purdey worked at the bench with Manton, whereas Beesley worked at the bench with men who had worked at the bench with Manton.
    Purdey was a blacksmith’s son whose father was, according to Donald Dallas, “conversant with all aspects of gun manufacture,” but Beesley was a farm lad from rural Oxfordshire. So how does a son of the soil find a fertile career in gunmaking? Like Purdey before him, Beesley was a recipient of what might be called Manton’s London legacy. In the summer of 1861, when he was 15, Beesley indentured himself for seven years to Joseph Manton’s former stocker, William Moore. Five years later he would be joined there, in the shops of Moore & Grey, by Henry Atkin the Younger.
    Moore had been an independent gunmaker since 1808, building muzzleloaders of such high quality that he’d been appointed Gunmaker in Ordinary to H.R.H. King William IV. On the strength of a pair of 14-bore muzzleloaders he’d built around 1840 for Queen Victoria’s consort, his trade label had come to read: “Gun Manufacturers to H.R.H. Prince Albert.” Around 1847 he had formed a partnership with another ex-Manton employee, an administrator named William Parker Grey. Grey had managed the day-to-day business of Moore & Grey much as he had for Manton a generation earlier.
    In 1869 Beesley left Moore & Grey and went to work as a stocker for Purdey’s. He remained there for the next nine years and obviously learned the value of collaborating with London’s most formidable gunmaking firm.
    In 1879, a year after he left Purdey’s, Beesley wrote to James Purdey the Younger: “Having invented a Hammerless gun which I believe to be equal to, if not superior to, anything of its kind yet produced; I am desirous of meeting with a purchaser of the right to same. It is on a principle entirely different to any other I market, and also possesses a peculiar advantage, as any old gun may be converted to a hammerless one at moderate expense. I offer it to your notice first in the trade, and should esteem the favor of a personal interview if worth your attention when I can submit a working conversion.”
    Unfortunately, Beesley may have been too eager to get his design into the hands of Purdey’s and as a result let it go too cheaply. According to Boothroyd, James Purdey the Younger paid just £35 for the rights to the assisted-opening hammerless action.
    I recently asked Richard Purdey, former Chairman of James Purdey & Sons,  if he thought his ancestor had gotten a good deal. “My great, great grandfather, James Purdey [The Younger], bought the rights to the patent for the Beesley assisted-opening hammerless action on 2nd January 1880, the day before the patent was published, and this agreement was formalized on 29th July the same year. Purdey paid Beesley the sum of £35 for the rights to produce the design, and without Beesley having any additional payments. There had been an alternative offered to Beesley, which was a down payment of £20 followed by a royalty of five shillings [25 pence] for every action produced until a total of 200 had been made, after which Purdey would have the sole rights. Beesley would have been better off if he had opted for the latter, but no doubt he needed the money and the £35 up front was more attractive than £20 down and the prospect of another £50 over the course of the next year or two. One has to take into account that at today’s values Purdey paid Beesley the equivalent of £3,500 and that at the time Purdey was taking a calculated business risk in offering a new and untried action as standard on his guns. Had it not worked reliably or had it proved unpopular, he could have damaged the firm’s reputation. In the end it was a shrewd move. The action proved to be outstandingly successful—both popular and reliable. This is borne out by the fact that since the arrival of the hammerless self-opener so few customers have opted for an un-assisted-opening action, or indeed a hammer action, though there is now a growing ‘retro’ popularity for these, perhaps akin to enjoying using a crash gearbox in a vintage car.
    “There is nothing anywhere to suggest that Purdey ever regretted having paid Beesley the £35 or, for that matter, that he felt he should have offered more. James Purdey was a shrewd and successful businessman as well as a highly skilled gunmaker. Beesley approached Purdey, his former employer, and no doubt knew what to expect and also what he wanted. This was a mutually agreed business deal between willing seller and willing buyer, and both parties, as far as we are able to judge 126 years on, were happy with it.”
    Happiness isn’t recorded in business transactions but, according to Crudgington and Baker, the £35 helped Frederick Beesley “. . . over a difficult patch early in his business career.” Beesley prospered, and his trade label read “Inventor and Patentee of Purdey’s Hammerless Gun.” Eventually, around 1891, he moved from the commercial, middle-class environment of Edgware Road to No. 2 St. James’s, a district of upper-crust clubs.
    During the 19th Century the area framed by Piccadilly, Green Park, Pall Mall and The Haymarket was home to most of London’s high-society men’s clubs. The district’s streets were lined with shops offering all of the accoutrements for the life of a pukka gentleman, with bespoke cordwainers, haberdashers and tobacconists plying their trades. The only women to be seen were the prostitutes patrolling The Haymarket. Gunmakers J.D. Dougall, Charles Moore, John Rigby, James Woodward and Stephen Grant all had premises on St. James’s during the Victorian era. Beesley’s success as an inventor may have eased his way into the cream of gunmaking society, and in this exclusive, masculine world his business boomed.
    In 1883 Beesley was granted a patent (No. 823) that suggested a couple of ways to use recoil to re-cock a conventional side-by-side drop-down gun. The abridgements show a sprung stock pad connected to the tumblers by a rod that ran through the inside of the stock, as well as a blowback breechblock. The principles behind these designs would find expression elsewhere, particularly in the US, where John Moses Browning eventually would develop them into self-loading weapons, but in Beesley’s hands they were unmemorable.
    That same year Beesley attempted to repeat his success with Purdey’s, registering designs with Edward Harrison, (No. 1,903) of Cogswell & Harrison, and James Woodward (No. 2,813), of James Woodward & Sons. Both utilized the fall of the barrels to cock conventional side-by-side sidelocks. The following year, 1884, Beesley patented yet another gun action (No. 425), this one using the mainspring as a cocking lever. Known as the “wrist-breaker” because it was so hard to close, it actually had some longevity in the marketplace—at least based on the numerous examples that have survived. Most such guns bear the name of Charles Lancaster, perhaps suggesting a licensing arrangement between Beesley and Lancaster owner Henry A.A. Thorn.
    In 1884 Beesley also patented a trigger safety (No. 11,382) with Edgar Harrison, of Cogswell & Harrison. Then apparently unsatisfied, he patented a blocking safety (No. 14,488) on his own that same year. His next efforts were a cocking mechanism (No. 8,657) in 1886, an over-center ejector (No. 20,979) in 1889, and another ejector (No. 8,648) in 1895. He was nothing if not prolific.
    Beesley followed up these with a single trigger based on the involuntary—or three-pull—system, in which the gunner pulls the trigger and as the gun recoils releases it, but then reflexively and unconsciously pulls it a second time. Because this happens every time a trigger is pulled, gunmakers sought to harness the second involuntary pull to reset the trigger for the second barrel. Between 1895 and 1904 Beesley took out a series of patents, each an improvement on the last, of what he called his “straight pull” system. In 1900 G.T. Teasdale-Buckell, in his book Experts on Guns and Shooting, wrote of Beesley: “. . . he is not yet satisfied with anything of his own, nor with any of the others . . . . he can make any of them go wrong by the peculiarity of holding, and he says that what a gunmaker can do intentionally his customer is liable to do accidentally.” Clearly then, early versions of these mechanical triggers could be made to malfunction by too tight or too slack a grip. Beesley’s efforts were attempts to overcome these inconsistencies.
    Teasdale-Buckell went on to say: “It is enough to state that Mr. Beesley holds in London very much the same position Mr. W.P. Jones holds in Birmingham; he is the principal inventor for the trade.” The development of a practical working trigger was a huge element of gunmaking zeitgeist in turn-of-the-century Britain, but it would be Beesley’s competitors—Boss, Purdey and Holland & Holland—that ultimately would produce lasting one-trigger designs.
    In 1913 Beesley began to register a series of designs for a gun for which he already had built at least one prototype. It was called the Shotover, and it had one barrel above the other. The first patent (No. 712) was for asymmetrical hammers, one of which was “hung to swing under its pivot while the other swings in the usual way,” with the intention of delivering a direct blow to the cartridge cap. This was a clever solution to the difficulty of angled strikers not hitting cartridge caps with sufficient force to fire the gun. Beesley made much of it in a catalog circa 1920: “Beesley’s Self-opening Gun, introduced in 1912, is an entirely new design, differing amongst other respects, in that the firing pistons are horizontal and parallel with the axes (sic) of the barrels, thus delivering a direct blow on the cap of the cartridge, entirely eliminating miss-fires, hitherto frequent in this style of weapon, supplied by the Trade.”
    The description of Beesley’s Standard 12 Bore (a Beesley/Purdey action) from the same catalog is fascinating if only because it so perfectly defines a “best” gun: “. . . of superlative quality, perfect construction, and finish, no effort being spared to ensure perfect fit, and balance . . . .”
    The Field called the Shotover a “marvel of ingenuity,” and it was ingeniously conceived and beautifully built, and it required hundreds of hours of the finest craftsmen’s time to file, fit and finish. It also was complicated and difficult to make, and the wagon-wheel-sized hinge pin made for an ugly gun. It was a monument to Beesley’s inventiveness, but it was also monumentally deep and ungainly and never seriously competed with the more svelte Boss and Woodward designs. It is significant that when the current Beesley firm (see sidebar) completed a pair of 20-bore over/unders in 1998, the guns were built on the Boss design.
    Despite his 21 patents, Frederick Beesley’s reputation as the Brunel of the London gun trade may be overstated. Few of his ideas saw broad acceptance, and none enjoyed the status or longevity of his Purdey action. Yet no one can argue with his greatest success. Donald Dallas, in his tome Purdey, the Definitive History, makes the point that at least part of the appeal was that Beesley “produced a very neat and graceful external appearance that complemented the existing Purdey style.” And Richard Akehurst, in Game Guns and Rifles, agrees: “A factor which no doubt assisted in making this gun popular was the neat and graceful external appearance of the locks and action.” This clearly was true. In the year before Purdey adopted the Beesley design, the firm built a hammerless, toplever gun which to all intents and purposes resembled the gun it produces today. Part of Beesley’s genius was that he radically improved the mechanics without impacting a fresh new aesthetic.
    Another significant reason for the gun’s success is its ability to take punishment. Writing in the 1887 edition of Shooting, Ralph Payne-Gallwey remarked that demand for Beesley-actioned Purdey’s had increased. He added: “In the hands of sportsmen who shoot as heavily as do great numbers of Messrs. Purdey’s customers, guns are necessarily subjected to the most severe tests, and in face of this, the increased demand is an indication of the gun’s success.” By the 1892 edition, he spoke of one shooter “to our knowledge [who] fired 18,000 shots from a pair of Messrs. Purdey’s guns, several shooters as many as 15,000, and many from 12,000 to 10,000.” Few guns 117 years ago could suffer this abuse and not shoot loose, but with the Beesley self-opener system, the rear hook is drawn right up to the locking bolt, keeping the barrels on face.
    It is difficult to overestimate the significance of the Beesley design. It has been imitated by gunmakers from Russia to Spain; and among ex-Purdey craftsmen who have hung out their own shingles, such as Henry Atkin, Peter Nelson and Peter Chapman, it has become the standard action. In fact, everyone from Otto Weiss at Hartmann & Weiss to Alan Crewe at Cogswell & Harrison have adopted it.
    There are few 125-year-old objects that have aged less than this gun. Like Catherine Deneuve, it is iconic, sexy and mature all at the same time. It is a grande dame yet functional and modern. Ripon and Walsingham wouldn’t touch it; like a woman who smoked cigarettes, it was simply too fast for them. Yet then, as now, its restrained elegance makes it the best “best” gun ever.
    Several years ago in a public poll organized by the BBC and London’s Design Museum, the defunct Concorde was voted “the greatest British design of all time.” In a world free from gun prejudice, this accord surely would have gone to the Beesley/Purdey action.

Douglas Tate is an Editor at Large for Shooting Sportsman.