W.J. Jeffery & Co

W.J. Jeffery & Co was a London gun and rifle maker.

History

In 1887 Philip Webley appointed William Jackman Jeffery manager of Webley's proposed London showroom at 60 Queen Victoria Street. Webley later abandoned their London operation and in 1890 Jeffery formed a partnership with a man by the name of Davies and Jeffery & Davies started trading from 60 Queen Victoria Street. This partnership was short lived and in 1891 the firm was renamed W.J. Jeffery & Co, still operating out of the Queen Victoria Street store. In 1898 the firm opened a shop at 13 King Street, St James's, and later a workshop at 1 Rose and Crown Yard, near to the King Street shop.

William Jeffery died in 1909, his brother Charles Jeffery took over the company. In 1914 the King Street shop was replaced by a smaller shop at 26 Bury Street, St James's, and the Rose and Crown yard workshops closed.

Charles Jeffery died in 1920 and his nephew F. Jeffery Pearce took over the company. The Queen Victoria Street shop was closed in 1921, and in 1927 the company moved to 9 Golden Square, Regent Street, in 1955, then W.J. Jeffery & Co Ltd moved to 5b Pall Mall.

In 1956 the company was sold to Malcolm Lyell who also owned the London Westley Richards agency and the business moved to 23 Conduit Street. In 1959 Lyell became managing director and chief executive of Holland & Holland, the address changed to 13 Bruton Street and the company became a subsidiary of Holland & Holland, under whom the W.J. Jeffery & Co name was used less and less.^[1]

From 2000 to 2010 J. Roberts & Son of London held the company records and had a licence to manufacture under the Jeffery name.

Products

Unlike other London gunmakers, W.J. Jeffery & Co offered modern big-game hunting rifles in the medium price bracket. In order to compete with his biggest competitors, John Rigby & Company and Westley Richards, Jeffery outsourced to several Birmingham based rifle manufacturers including Saunders, Ellis, Webley, Tolley and Leonard bros, as well as Turners of Reading, John Wilkes and others as well as sourcing components from abroad.^[1]

By 1905 the firm was producing large numbers of mid-priced nitro express double rifles, both in its own and other calibres, by the time of William Jeffery's death in 1909 they were probably the largest marketer of double rifles within the UK,^[1] with large numbers being used in Africa and India.

With the contraction of the British Empire after World War II, the company's market share reduced, by the 1950s it was predominantly selling shotguns and bolt action rifles.^[1]

One user was Jim Corbett, who used a W.J. Jeffrey & Co boxlock double rifle chambered in .400 Jeffery Nitro Express, along with a lighter Rigby Mauser in .275 Rigby.

In the early years of WWI, Jeffery's high velocity .333 Jeffery cartridge proved effective against the steel mantlet plates used by German snipers at the time.

Ammunition developed by W.J. Jeffery & Co

• .400 Jeffery Nitro Express in 1902.
• .600 Nitro Express in 1903.
• .404 Jeffery in 1905.
• .475 No. 2 Jeffery from 1906.
• .333 Jeffery in 1908.
• .280 Jeffery in 1913.
• .303 Magnum in 1919.
• .500 Jeffery in 1920.

See also

• Nitro Express

References

Footnotes

Bibliography

• Roberts, Paul, Nitro big game rifles, retrieved 13 Nov 15.