Misplaced Pages

William Bishop (gun seller)

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.
Portrait of the "Bishop of Bond Street" by Henry Barraud, 1848. The bust is of Colonel Peter Hawker.

William Bishop (1797 – 16 March 1871) nicknamed as the Bishop of Bond Street was a gun dealer on New Bond Street, London, who served as an agent for the gunsmith Westley Richards. He was responsible for popularizing guns as a very successful gun seller and a promoter of sport shooting.

Biography

Bishop was born in Ealing and became a goldsmith and later served as an agent for Westley Richards. His shop which was at 170 Bond Street grew into a well-known establishment. Known for wearing a top hat indoors and for his charismatic manners he came to be called the "Bishop of Bond Street". George Teasdale-Buckell described him as: "A large and roomy man, old Bishop, sitting in front of the old white mantelpiece … his gouty leg up on a chair before him. Dressed from head to foot in the blackest of black, a huge white frill proceeding from his breast, and an enormous pair of shirt cuffs turned back over his coat sleeves, and a neatly brimmed hat, which no mortal eye had ever seen off his head. A truly right reverend and Episcopal figure.." Bishop kept several pet dogs and when one of his dogs named Tiny was stolen he was angry to learn that a man could be jailed for stealing a dog collar but not a dog. He then helped create legislation to criminalize the theft of a dog and the Dog Act of 1845 came to be called the Bishop's Act. He had a marble monument made when Tiny died. In 1861 the census noted him as a widower living with three servants above his shop. Upon his death, his estate was valued at £10,000.

References

  1. Teasdale-Buckell, G. T. (1900). Experts on guns and shooting. London: Sampson Low, Marston, and Company. pp. 492–499.
  2. Tolfrey, Frederick (1845). "The Bishop and the dog bill". The Sporting Magazine. 6: 185–188.
  3. "Dog stealing Bill. (Hansard, 11 June 1845)". api.parliament.uk. Retrieved 2023-08-31.
  4. Taylor, Leslie B. (1913). A brief history of the Westley Richards firm, 1812-1913. Stratford-upon-Avon: Shakespeare head press. pp. 15–24.

External links

Categories: