Burgess & C°
Well I must admit that I knew neither this weapon nor the company Burgess & Co, which according to the documentation that I finally unearthed, only existed from 1892 to 1899, when it was bought by Winchester, who quickly liquidated it and put everything in the archives.
However, with this weapon, probably built in a few copies (perhaps a few hundred), the engineer Andrew Burgess seems to have put on the market an ideal weapon for police services, thanks to the fact that it can be folded 180° and carried in a case specially designed for this purpose, which made it easy to transport.
I only knew Burgess from his exploits with Colt...
The system of cocking by slide under the pistol grip is simply brilliant and must have made the people at Winchester green with envy. The filing of plans, patents and other documents in oblivion is therefore not really surprising.
This is indeed the 1st shotgun "version". Too bad that some parts are missing, especially the magazine cover, on which are the address and patent markings... but these weapons are so rare that you should not miss the opportunity when you find one.
We know the Burgess Lever Action Rifle of underguard, manufactured in less than 7,000 copies, which was an attempt by Colt to steal part of Winchester's market.
Production was abruptly stopped when Oliver Winchester retaliated by presenting the prototypes of 4 models of revolvers, at least as good as those of Colt, and moreover designed by people such as John M Browning, Hugo Borchardt and especially William Mason, former employee of Colt, inventor of one of the conversion systems of the percussion Colts, and having participated in the development of the SAA 1873.
Not really tinkerers!
Marcel
