Thread: Military razors

(Pic stolen from an an older thread,)

Does anyone have information on service issue razors? I think I have one, I'll post a picture later. It is blonde horn with some rough numbers stamped in the horn, like this one on the pic. It also is a Wedge.


What reference is used to state these are service issue? My brother teaches NROTC high School and is interested in showing the kids how servicemen would have shaved in the 1800's.

Here is a John C. Cockhill...one of several that I have. This one is in the 'to do box' and will be up on the restore bench soon.

It is very nice shaver...

Other than that I know very little about any 'reference information'....




WP34

Most likely, those are both WWI era Britsh service razors. The government ran a program refurbishing old razors -- so both of them were donated to the war effort.

Tracking down information on the numbers is somewhere between mildly challenging and outright impossible. Many records were destroyed during WWII, and a lot of numbers were used multiple times, unfortunately.

On top of that, the numbers themselves aren't always fully legible. However, if you want to give it a shot, here's where you start:

National Archives.

Horn-scaled and numbered straight razors were mostly campaign issue (pre WW1, eg Crimea, Indian mutiny, Boer) and lasted up to WW1. The regimental numbers impressed into the horn are next to useless for ID puposes, as most records (around 50%) were lost during the blitz when the storage building caught fire, and of the half that remained a good deal are severely burnt and mostly illegible. The sad fact of the matter is that there is no true record of how many men served in both wars - numbers were only issued once the war office officials had a chance to compile all the names erected on monuments in town and city centres, so at best all we have is a 'guestimate'.

Even when you can ascribe a number to a regiment it is pretty meaningless as prior to 1920 each regiment had its own service numbers, which were re-used, so several people could have had the same number. On top of that regiments were merged/combined/split

Regards,
Neil

Thanks for all the great info.
I was looking merely for some sort of verification that the numbers on the scales were because they were military issue.

Originally Posted by souschefdude

Thanks for all the great info.
I was looking merely for some sort of verification that the numbers on the scales were because they were military issue.

Servicemen in bygone times were issued with a personal, one-off 'small kit' consisting of razor, brushes, etc. It was up to the soldier to maintain the kit at his own expense. If anything was broken or lost he could get a replacement from the quartermasters stores, but he had to pay for it.

This explains some of the crude ownership markings: obviously the soldier thought that a lost razor might be returned if it had a unique mark like his pay number on it and that it might deter others who had lost their razors from stealing his.

Razors issued by the QM store would just have the war department mark on tnem, not a personal mark. Shortages during times of war were made good by advertisements for public donations, so the vast number of surviving razors do not have war department marks, just regimental pay numbers.

To go back to an earlier posting, if a soldier was killed or discharged then his payroll number was used for someone else, which makes it difficult to tie in a marked razor with a particular individual.

Regards,
Neil

Originally Posted by Neil Miller

This explains some of the crude ownership markings: obviously the soldier thought that a lost razor might be returned if it had a unique mark like his pay number on it and that it might deter others who had lost their razors from stealing his.

Ah! That really explains why some of them didn't include any clear indication of which regiment it was.

I am still kind of kicking myself though for not getting the one I saw from the very early days of the RAF.

I dug mine out. It is a J Allen & sons wedge?.
Numbers are 964 and maybe 5?k

Fortunately the scales are in decent shape, the blade is a little rough at the toe, but no rust. Small stress cracks at one pin, should be ok. Lead wedge spacer.

Still sits upright!