Eley Brothers

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ELEY logo.jpg
Eleyhawk logo.jpg

Eley Brothers was a British ammunition manufacturer founded in 1828. The company merged with other ammunition manufacturers in 1918; the Eley brand was retained. Since 1983 another company has been independent under the name Eley . In 1989 Eley Hawk , specializing in shotgun shells , was spun off , while Eley concentrated on .22-lfB sports ammunition.

history

William Eley
Eley Brothers pen fire cartridge
.30-30 Winchester from Eley-Kynoch

The Eleys were a family of silversmiths , originally from Derbyshire , who gained some prominence in London. The brothers William and Charles had already teamed up as silversmiths in Hampstead in the early 1820s .

In 1827 they acquired from Joshua Jenour a patent on a grapeshot from wire for meal charges . The purpose of the wire brush was to hold the otherwise loose shot load together for the first 100 meters or so in order to increase the range. In 1828 the brothers William and Charles Eley opened a larger factory in London to produce the wire brushes. In the middle of 1830 the Eley improved the wire grape brush, later followed by a wireless grape brush, the shot load was held together by soft layers of bone meal .

Next, William Eley turned to primer caps , where he is considered an influential pioneer. In 1837 he received a patent for waterproof primers. In the same year, Eley also started producing primer caps. Under the ownership of William Eleys since 1838, the company grew into a large ammunition manufacturer.

William Eley was killed in an explosion in 1841, at the age of 47, while working with fumed mercury (the explosive component of primers) in his laboratory . The company was inherited by his three sons William Thomas, Charles and Henry in 1842. In the 1840s, the name was changed to "Eley Brothers".

William Thomas Eley was as ingenious as his father. He developed manufacturing machines that simplified the manufacturing process for cartridges and made them cheaper. The product range has been expanded; in addition to cartridges and primers, z. B. Detonators or gunshot plasters produced. In 1855, William Thomas Eley and Samuel Colt developed a joint patent for revolver cartridges. In the American Civil War (1861-1865) Eley was an important supplier to the Confederates .

The 1860s marked major changes in weapon technology; the era of muzzle-loading weapons came to an end, and the military was now relying on breech- loading weapons . The British military established a committee in 1864 to oversee the changeover. The American Jacob Snider developed the Snider-Enfield Rifle , a conversion of the Enfield Rifled Musket muzzle loader . Originally, ammunition manufacturer George H. Daw was supposed to develop centerfire ammunition for the rifle. A personal rift ended this collaboration and Snider approached Eley Brothers. Due to the possible large order from the military, a lot of money was involved. Eley Brothers copied the Daw cartridges and the manufacturing process with minor changes. Daw took legal action against it and obtained an injunction in November 1865. In mid-1866, Eley Brothers entered into a cooperation with the British officer Edward Mounier Boxer . Boxer modified the ignition and inserted a rolled metal shell. Production of the .577 Snider started in 1866 at the Royal Arsenal and Eley Brothers. Daw took legal action against these cartridges in December 1866. In the meantime Eley had come to an agreement with other patent owners; Daw's lawsuit was dismissed.

From the cylindrical .577 Snider, Eley Brothers developed the .577 / 450 Martini – Henry bottle neck sleeve for the Martini-Henry rifle . In 1874 the corporate form changed to Limited , a non-listed corporation. The expansion of the company was accelerated with the capital raised through the issue of shares . Waterproof shotgun shells, another novelty, followed in 1882.

After the eldest brother, William Thomas Eley, died in 1888, the company went through various ups and downs. In 1894 the company was excluded from public contracts because the .303 British cartridges it had supplied were defective. Between 1901 and 1906, several explosions occurred, and there were strikes of workers . In 1907 a new scrap tower was built. At that time, the product portfolio comprised around 400 different cartridges.

During World War I (1914-1918) Eley Brothers was the smallest of the five suppliers of rifle cartridges in the United Kingdom. After the war, in 1918, Eley joined other companies - u. a. Nobel Explosives and Kynoch - together for Explosives Trades . The main aim of the business combination approved by the British government was to mitigate the effects of the overcapacity created during the war . In 1920 the name changed to Nobel Industries . In 1926 Nobel Industries merged with other companies to form Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI). Eley was retained as a brand name.

The Angel Road factory closed in 1921. The later formed industrial park Eley Business Park recalls the origin of the town. Production initially continued in Waltham Abbey . In 1925 it was decided to concentrate the ammunition production in the Kynoch main plant in Witton in Birmingham . The slow move dragged on until 1928. Eley was retained as part of the new Eley-Kynoch brand .

The metal division, ICI Metals Division, was formed in 1962 as a subsidiary of Imperial Metal Industries and was independent of ICI in 1978. The still profitable business with rimfire ammunition for sport shooters and shotgun cartridges was continued. The ammunition division of IMI was spun off in 1983 as a new company with the company Eley . In 1987 Eley took over the ammunition manufacturer Hawk. In 1989 Eley Hawk was outsourced as a shotgun shells company and in 2002 sold to Unión Española de Explosivos (UEE).

Eley has since concentrated on the .22lr sport ammunition. It is considered to be of high quality and was z. B. used by 84% of sport shooters at the 1968 Summer Olympics . In 1990 the market share in Great Britain was over 50%.

In 2002/2003 both Eley and Eley Hawk moved from Witton to the neighboring Sutton Coldfield to newly built production facilities.

In 2014 there was a management buy-out for £ 42 million ; IMI wanted to focus on the core business . The Eley Group then consisted of Eley Ltd, which also contained Eley Americas Inc, and the battle gun manufacturer Accles & Shelvoke. That year, a workforce of 120 had sales of £ 17 million. Accles & Shelvoke was sold to the food technology company Frontmatec in 2017 .

Trivia

In the short story The Speckled Band , Sherlock Holmes recommends his friend Dr. Watson the revolver ammunition Eley's No. 2 as an effective remedy against physically superior opponents.

literature

  • Bill Harding, CW Harding: Eley Cartridges: History of the Silversmiths and Ammunition Manufacturers , Quiller Verlag, 2006, ISBN 9781904057918 .

Web links

Commons : Eley Brothers  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Bill Harding, CW Harding: Eley Cartridges: History of the Silversmiths and Ammunition Manufacturers , Quiller Verlag, 2006, ISBN 9781904057918 [1]
  2. ↑ Giorgio B .: ELEY FAMILY: WILLIAM ELEY I - WILLIAM ELEY II - CHARLES ELEY - HENRY ELEY
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Ronald R. Switzer: The Steamboat Bertrand and Missouri River Commerce University of Oklahoma Press, 2013, ISBN 9780806151281 [2] [3]
  4. ^ Eley Hawk Launches the Grand Prix collectors edition , Eley Hawk's homepage
  5. ^ William Wellington Greener: Modern breech-loaders: sporting and military , Verlag Cassell, Petter and Galpin, pp. 42-43 [4]
  6. ↑ Oyvind Flatnes: From Musket to Metallic Cartridge: A Practical History of Black Powder Firearms , Verlag Crowood, 2013 ISBN 9781847975942 , p. 579 [5]
  7. ^ The rise and progress of the British explosives industry , 1909, p. 99 [6]
  8. ^ The rise and progress of the British explosives industry , 1909, p. 368 [7]
  9. ↑ a b Our Rich Heritage , homepage of Eley Hawk
  10. ^ The rise and progress of the British explosives industry , 1909, p. 370 [8]
  11. ↑ a b c d The history of ELEY , Eley homepage
  12. ↑ Peter Smith Hurst: The Pattern 1853 Enfield Rifle , Osprey Publishing , p 76
  13. ↑ Manfred R. Rosenberger, Katrin Hanné: From the powder horn to the rocket projectile: The history of small arms ammunition. Motorbuch Verlag, 1993, ISBN 3613015412 , pp. 108–111, 141–142
  14. ^ William Wellington Greener: Modern breech-loaders: sporting and military , Verlag Cassell, Petter and Galpin, 1871 p. 232 [9]
  15. ^ The rise and progress of the British explosives industry , 1909, p. 370 [10]
  16. ↑ The Official History of the Ministry of Munition, Vol. 1. Industrial mobilization, 1914–1915 , 1922, pp. 72–73 [11]
  17. ^ A b Eley Brothers , Graces Guide to British Industrial History
  18. ^ A b Richard Evely, IMD Little: Concentration in British Industry: An Empirical Study of the Structure of Industrial Production 1935-51 Verlag Cambridge University Press , 1960, ISBN 9781107601345 , p. 120 [12]
  19. ^ A b Brian J. Heard: Handbook of Firearms and Ballistics: Examining and Interpreting Forensic Evidence , Verlag John Wiley & Sons , 2011, ISBN 9781119964773 , p. 348 [13]
  20. ^ Eley Business Park, Edmonton
  21. ↑ a b c Kynoch , Graces Guide to British Industrial History
  22. ^ ICI Metals Division , Graces Guide to British Industrial History
  23. ↑ Eley Hawk 2016 brochure , p. 5
  24. ↑ Pot Shots in: Field & Stream , Volume 75, No. 4, August 1970, ISSN 8755-8599 P. 72 [14]
  25. ↑ Retail Business: Market reports, issues 383-388 , Verlag Economist Intelligence Unit , 1990, p. 149 [15]
  26. ^ Eley Hawk celebrates 190 years of innovation , Eley Hawk Homepage
  27. ↑ LDC backs £ 42m Eley buyout in: Insider Media, October 6, 2014
  28. ↑ Tamlyn Jones: Historic Birmingham manufacturer acquired by Danish group , in: Birmingham Post , May 9, 2017
  29. ↑ Arthur Conan Doyle : The Adventure of the Speckled Band , 1892 [16]
  30. ↑ The Broadview Anthology of British Literature: The Victorian Era - Second Edition , Broadview Press, ISBN 9781770480919 , 2006, p. 757 [17]