Boss & Co
Boss & Co can trace its origins to 1773, when William Boss began his apprenticeship in Birmingham. In the late eighteenth century he moved to Joseph Manton’s firm in London and his son Thomas Boss was apprenticed to Manton. When Thomas finished his apprenticeship in 1812, he started his own firm in St James’s Street, where he began making Best Guns only. This policy is still applied, prompting King George VI to say:
“A Boss gun, a Boss gun……bloody beautiful, but too bloody expensive!”
It is true to say that they are still, unashamedly, amongst the most expensive new guns in the world.
A Boss gun was such a favourite with Papa Hemingway that he used one to end it all.
The firm does, by popular demand, also make a more economical model, called the ‘Robertson’, named after John Robertson, who bought the firm in 1891 and devised the Boss single trigger in 1894, the Boss ejector in 1898 and their own over-and-under in 1909.
After a few moves around the West End, the shop and the workshop are now at Kew Bridge. A selection of shots of a fine pair of Boss & Co side-by-side shotguns is shown in the picture, courtesy of Boss & Co.