Product Details
A FINE CASED 15-BORE PERCUSSION DOUBLE-BARRELLED SPORTING GUN SIGNED ALEXANDER WILSON, LONDON, no visible serial number,
circa 1818 and converted from flintlock, with re-browned 26 1/2in. twist barrels, the top-rib signed 'ALEXr. WILSON SHERRARD ST'T LONDON', bead fore-sight, twin platinum lines and vented plugs at breech, fully fenced nipples, border and scroll engraved top-tang, borderline engraved bar-action locks signed 'ALEXr WILSON SHERRARD ST'T LONDON' (traces of colour) and further engraved with a coiled feathered serpent, a shell and scrolls, slab-sided dolphin-headed hammers, each also engraved with a coiled feathered serpent, walnut half-stock chequered at the wrist and with carved droppers behind the locks, rectangular clipped-corner escutcheon to top of wrist, iron heel-plate with engraved acanthus foliage around the screws and along the top-spur, border, shell and acanthus scroll engraved trigger-guard bow and finial with raised scrolled pistol-grip tang further engraved with a coiled feathered serpent, engraved iron ramrod throat, plain thimbles and brass mounted ebony ramrod, in a later leather guncase compartmented and lined in red baize, a reproduction Alexander Wilson trade label inside lid and with cross-straps to outer
Provenance: Interestingly, the vendor informs us that the end of stock is signed and dated 1841 below the heel-plate, the signature illegible. This is possibly the mark of the conversion date or perhaps a servicing or later retailer. Two photographs of this mark are supplied in the case.
Alexander Wilson was apprenticed to John Manton and started his own business in 1805 at 14 Titchborne Street London until 1811 when he moved to No 3 Sherrard Street. He died in 1819 and the business continued under the name of his wife Elizabeth and younger brother William. Wilson's Gun and Pistol Warehouse at No.1 Vigo Lane had been established in 1805 and it was here that Joseph Lang began his apprenticeship with Wilson in 1812. By 1823 Lang had started up his own business, styled as the 'Gun and Pistol Repository from Wilson's Warehouse Vigo Lane' at 7, Haymarket and in 1826 was able to buy out all the remaining stock from the recently bankrupted Joseph Manton.
Sadly, the career of Mr Alexander Wilson did not end well as the following quote from a periodical, The Gentlemans Magazine and Historical Chronicle for July to December 1819 states:
"Mr Alexander Wilson, gunsmith of Sherrard Street, Piccadilly. The deceased, after his shop had been shut up for the evening, went out with the intention of taking a walk in the Regent's Park. When he reached Oxford Street, he was seized with a pain in the head, and set down on a step of a shop: A coachman on the stand, observing his situation, immediately went towards him, and asked him if he was unwell? The deceased replied that he was very ill, and begged the coachman to drive him to his family doctor, who lived in the neighbourhood; which he accordingly did, but the doctor was not at home. The deceased then requested the coachman to drive him to his own house in Sherrard Street. On the arrival of the coach at the deceased's house, the coachman knocked at the door; Mrs Wilson came out; when the coachman told her that a gentleman was in his coach extremely ill. Mrs W. immediately exclaimed "My god, I hope it's not my husband". She opened the coach door, and shocking to relate, found her husband lifeless, sitting on the seat, with his head reclined against the back of the coach. The feelings of Mrs W. Can better be imagined than described. Mr Shaw, a professional gentleman, opened the body of the deceased, and also the skull, when a suffusion of water was found on the brain, which undoubtedly occasioned Mr Wilson's immediate death."
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Estimate £1,500-2,000