Product Details
H. BEESLEY
A RARE AND UNUSUAL 12-BORE SIDELEVER BOXLOCK EJECTOR, DESIGNED BY C.J. HEATH (F.R.C.S.), serial no. 8871,
24 1/2in. nitro chopperlump barrels with broad semi-sunken matt rib with intermediate bead, the tubes engraved 'DESIGNED BY C.J. HEATH F.R.C.S. MADE BY H. BEESLEY. 48. LOVEDAY ST. BIRMINGHAM.', 2 1/2in. chambers, bored approx. 1/4 and 1/2 choke, scroll-backed sidelever action, automatic safety with gold-inlaid 'SAFE' detail, beaded border and acanthus scroll engraving, brushed bright and blued finish, 14 1/2in. figured stock including 3/4in. rubber recoil pad, weight 6lb. 14oz.
Provenance: The vendor has researched this shotgun and its provenance, and has kindly supplied us with the following information pertaining to the original owner:
"Charles Joseph Heath F.R.C.S. (1856 - 1934) was elected President of WAGBI in 1926, but he is better known for his chamberless wildfowling gun. Indeed, many wildfowlers and readers of Burrard, who praised his lightweight chamberless gun fully, will be aware of his advocacy of the combination of large shot (load and size) with low powder charges in order to reduce muzzle velocity and thereby recoil. They will also remember that Heath, an aural surgeon, defined gun headache very simply - as a form of mild concussion - and put paid to claims that it was caused by over-indulgence in food, drink or tobacco.
Heath was by nature inventive and his inventiveness was not restricted to sport. Professionally, he devised a novel operation for mastoid disease, which avoided the destruction of the eardrum, as well as inventing numerous surgical instruments. These were, in fact, the first non-corrosive surgical instruments fashioned from Harry Brearley's stainless steel, which had recently been introduced in 1913 to resist erosion and fouling in rifle barrels. Heath also designed a gas-mask used in the First World War and defined the essential principles in the design of army boots for the Army Hygienic Advisory Committee.
It is no surprise, therefore, that Heath should design his own game gun. And it is this Lot, one can only assume, that is referred to by one of his friends in Heath's entry in Plarr's "Lives of the Fellows of the Royal College of Surgeons": "Charles was a remarkable man…I have shot with him for many years past… Charles Heath had … a gun made after his own pattern, which was in many ways different from the ordinary, and he shot well with it," Heath was a first-rate shot and his fellow surgeon, John Adams goes on to say: "which he would also have done with an ordinary gun."
Heath also served on the Home Office Wild Birds Advisory Committee and was a Companion of the Marine Engineers Institute. At the time of his death, he still held the presidency of Wildfowlers Association. He was buried at the Greenwich Cemetery, Shooter's Hill."
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Estimate £800-1,200
S2