An Unusual 32 Bore Irish Percussion Box Lock Turn Over Pistol by W & J Rigby. 7 ½” overall, 3 ¼” over & under turn over octagonal sighted barrels each engraved at the breech with scrollwork, scroll engraved nipples, box lock action with typical Rigby Celtic engraving signed ‘W & J Rigby’ on L/H and ‘Dublin’ on R/H. Offset hammer with three bents, offset folding trigger, flattened chequered figured walnut butt with engraved hinged cover retaining cavities for balls & caps, vacant silver escutcheon, stirrup ramrod to side of barrels. No. 9719 for 1847.
In good condition with browned barrels and very fine engraving.
A very unusual pistol with rare features, I have never seen one quite like it. Off centre hammer to aid sighting and three hammer bents to allow safe carrying when loaded are quite uncommon.
See D.H.L. Back ‘Messrs Rigby 1760-1869’, p.113.
Originally supplied to Hon C. Clements. ‘Pair of swivel rod over and under pistols with magazine handles, Cased’
Charles Skeffington Clements (1807 – 29 September 1877) was an Irish Whig politician. Clements was the third son of Nathaniel Clements, 2nd Earl of Leitrim —one of the first two MPs to sit for Leitrim after the Acts of the Union 1801 —and Mary Bermingham, daughter of William Bermingham and Mary née Ruttledge. A captain in the army, he died unmarried in 1877. Clements was elected Whig MP for Leitrim at the 1847 General Election and held the seat until 1852 when he was unseated, finishing third and bottom in the poll. He was brother of William Sydney Clements, 3rd Earl of Leitrim (15 October 1806 – 2 April 1878),who was an Anglo-Irish nobleman and landlord notorious in Irish history for his mistreatment of his tenants . He was assassinated in the north of County Donegal in Ireland in April 1878.