Heaven in Essex newstatesman.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from newstatesman.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
When cataloguing some items for auction, a fair amount of detective work is required. Take these pistols pictured here. They are signed ‘M Smith’ and cased, but the case appears to be for a much longer-barrelled pair. These guns are of the so-called ‘heavy overcoat type’, a style much favoured by the constabulary and the coastguard for that matter but are of much better commercial quality than is usually encountered. The barrels are also marked to the ‘Public Office’, suggesting municipal use. The lid handle escutcheon gives more information in that the enclosed pistols were presented to a Mr William Corbett for his services as ‘Constable’ from October 1839 to October 1840. The internet and its reach is a valuable tool in our work nowadays, and often a search on various ancestry sites will yield results, but on this occasion William Corbett proved elusive, so more detection was needed. Location The Public Office mentioned on the barrels was a municipal buildin