Thread: Victorian (Military?) Wade and Butcher with Queen Victoria's Cypher

What a great find! You'll enjoy that!

I don't suppose you play the pipes do you? I live in Kernersville, NC and have taken a few lessons from Sir Robert Bell. Never graduated up from the chanter though. I need to get back at it!!

I started playing uilleann pipes about 26 years ago (I played highland pipes for about 5 years during high school & college, but that was just a way-station on the road to the uilleann pipes--though a very helpful way-station). Tim Britton made my pipes (yep, still playing the chanter he made for me 26 years ago). Who made your chanter?

My wife and I and several friends attended the Kernersville Victorian Ball back in March.

My chanter doesn't have a name on it. It's a generic black plastic piece. I was pretty well through the College of Piping Tutor for the Highland Bagpipe (Green Piping Book). Life intervened and I had to stop taking lessons from Sir Robert. Its something that I long to get back into though. I wish I could have gone to that ball! I collect and shoot Victorian firearms so I naturally look for razors from that era. Amazingly they aren't hard to find. This one is my favorite by far. I'm going to send it off to get honed today. I've been trying to restore some razors by I'm no pro and I don't want to screw this up!

I once had the chance to do an evening class in piping in London, but a girlfriend pushed me into doing a class in teaching English as a foreign language, in which I had no specific qualifications and still don't, despite having done it for Arabs up to the rank of crafty old Major-General for most of the following 34 years. It was quite vile, and anybody who has trained a collie dog could out-teach the perpetrators. But we are still good friends, for nothing but being an item ever came between us.

I have heard the Breton biniou, although they often import Scottish pipes in plain cover, and a high spot in my life was "The British Grenadiers" played in our honour by the pipes and drums of the Royal Saudi Air Force. I also remember the sound of the pipes drifting about a kilometre from the paradeground of the Kuwaiti Military College, while lesser instruments were defeated by mere distance.

I don't know if the Victorians ever made dud razors. They did with most things, but I think they have about gone by now, and I'm confident this one is very good. I like the scales shaped to eliminate a wedge. Wade and Butcher had a Concave model by the 1830s, not hollow-ground but with a flattish blade backed up by a flange, and probably ground in a lengthwise direction. (I think this shape probably inspired the Frame Back models, with an inserted but not normally replaceable blade,) So I think the military probably went for the basic model.

An ancient friend of my childhood said that his First World War issue straight razor was a vile specimen, although he was talking of a time when when military contracts were thrown at anyone who couldn't do more directly martial work. He resented having to carry it around, together with the one he bought for actual use. But he thought it saved his life, for he was sure that if he didn't throw it away, he would survive to avoid stoppage of pay by handing in at the end of hostilities. He admitted it wasn't very scientific.

The royal cipher is interesting, but I wonder if it has a stylised broad arrow on the other side? That is a much older mark of military property. For the standard military arrow was a narrow, pyramidal head, which would sometimes pierce armour, and easily find any chinks. But as it flew well to long range, it might be used by anybody. Hunters would sacrifice a bit of range to make sure a deer would go down nearby, But nobody but the navy had any use for an exaggerated broad head, to cut sails and ropes.

The photo is of my grandfather, with the lawful minimum caterpillar to comply with the regulations. We sometimes forget, from the 1920s and 30s fashion, that it originated with people who didn't want any more of a moustache than they could get away with.

Awesome stuff! Thanks for sharing all that.
No broad arrow. However the arrow would indicate that it was official army property at one point. I don' t know that they issued straight razors. I bet most had to bring their own into the service.

I sent the blade off to be sharpened but it is being returned to me undone due to some possible problem with the metal. That's disappointing. I may let another honemeister take a look at it before I give up trying to make it a shaver.

I'll keep you posted.
Thanks again
Tim

That is odd. I would trust the people who do professional work via this site. But if it was someone else, it might be that you are being put off by someone who is set up to do only light honing, like a razor might need after a lot of normal use. This one, though it may have sharpened a pencil or settled a gang fight in its time, doesn't look irrecoverable.

The only purely metallurgical problem I can think of is having the hardness drawn in a house fire. This is quite comon with Japanese swords, due to their tradition of building houses of paper and firewood. It would be difficult to reharden it without distortion, although perhaps worth risking an eBay $22. Horn scales would show any such accident, but ebony mightn't.

Thank you for your kind remarks, although I am uncomfortably aware that the bulge in his pocket is very like his "ivory" celluloid safety razor box.

I have already seen this picture from the SRP archive, which is identical to the Wade & Butcher Superior Concave which I have just started restoring, except that mine came without scales. They date it (their specimen or model, and on what authority I don't know) at 1830-37. But I have only just noticed that it bears the same Victoria cypher as yours

Wade & Butcher "Full Concave Fine India Steel" 7/8 - Straight Razor Place Wiki

It is, moreover, marked "Admiralty approved" in the maker's inscription on the tang. Unlike guns, of course, there is no way these marks could be made, other than at a fairly early stage of manufacture. So we have two rather similar Wade and Butcher razors which seem to have a naval connection, and of which one (not the less technically sophisticated of the two) can be dated right at the beginning of the Victorian period.

The naval connection makes sense. Naval training at the time was not college-based, and boys of pre-shaving age often went to sea, whether as boys or on the officer track as midshipmen. Hormones could kick in on an extremely lengthy voyage, and for midshipmen, who led a brutally hard life, there was none of that modern nonsense about personal grooming being a matter of personal choice. It would make sense to have razors available, possibly for issue, but more likely for a ship's barber's use.

Great find. I have one just like it.