Unlike many institutions, the origins of Purdey are still intrinsic to the business today. The story of how the company came to be is tied to two men – a father and son, both called James. Between them, they owned and ran the firm for nearly a century, and much of what we still do has direct links back to them.
The first James Purdey (pictured above in 1863) was born in Whitechapel in 1784, the son of a gun barrel maker. His father’s untimely death when James was 12 put him on a different path. At the age of 14, he was apprenticed to his brother-in-law, a stocker called Thomas Hutchinson. He spent seven years learning the craft that, in time, became the foundation of his own company.
As a new journeyman, his first employer was Joseph Manton, known as the ‘King of Gunmakers’. Manton later paid Purdey the ultimate compliment when he told celebrated diarist, author and shooting sportsman, Colonel Peter Hawker that “Purdey gets up the best work, next to mine”. After three years, Purdey went to work for the Rev. Alexander Forsyth, who had invented the percussion cap. James worked there for six years, becoming the Foreman of Forsyth’s workshop, before he decided he would start his own business. He set up his first premises in a small shop at 4 Princes Street, just off Leicester Square in London.
In 1826, Joseph Manton went bankrupt, and James acquired the lease on his former employer’s Oxford Street premises (pictured, top). It included not only a retail space and workshops, but a flat above as well. It was there that his son and heir, James the Younger (pictured below in 1860), was born in 1828. He grew up with the sounds of gun making, and in 1843 he was apprenticed to his father as a stocker, learning his trade in the same way. At the end of his training, he joined the family business.
At the time, James the Elder was already building sporting guns and rifles for Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert, but it was another client, Lord Henry Bentinck, who ensured the survival of the company. In 1847, Bentinck came across Purdey putting up the shutters at the end of the day and enquired how business was. James answered honestly that things were bad; there were not enough orders, and customers were not paying their bills. These were the same issues that had led to Manton’s bankruptcy 19 years earlier.
Lord Henry is said to have told James – “Leave it to me” – and over the next five years he bought 125 guns of all types. He may also have inspired his friends to pay their invoices, but whatever he did the financial position improved significantly. To this day, a photograph of Lord Henry is displayed in the Long Room, with a note from James the Elder declaring that he was: “My Earliest and Best Customer and Friend when I was a Youth.”
In the early 1850s, father and son invented the original ‘Express’ rifle, known today as the Sidelock Double Rifle. These were named after the new Express trains of the period, due to the higher velocity of its distinctive ‘winged’ bullet. This was their only inventive collaboration before James the Elder retired in 1858. He encouraged his son to find a business partner to invest in the company, but none was forthcoming. Instead, James the Younger offered his father a pension of £1,000 a year, the equivalent of 20 guns, for the rest of his life. This was formalised in 1860, and lasted until James the Elder’s death in November 1863, at the age of 79. He lived long enough to see his son patent perhaps his most important invention: the locking system for Side-by-Side guns still used today, that is universally known as ‘Purdey Bolts’.