The light brigade

As well as supplying guns to the civilian market for more than 150 years, the gunsmiths of Birmingham had supplied firearms to British and Overseas Governments, when, in 1854, during the Crimean War (1853-56), they united to form ‘The Birmingham Small Arms Association,’ or BSA.

Seven years later they formed The Birmingham Small Arms Company Ltd. This new company acquired a 25-acre site at Small Heath, Birmingham, and the Great Western Railway agreed to build a station and goods facilities nearby. During 1863, the initial factory building was finished – unfortunately not to the taste of many local residents, who likened it to a dull, bland fortress, with a tower at each corner.

At first using high quality American machinery, the wooden parts of guns were factory produced while the metal components were still hand finished. Further American equipment – for precision manufacturing gun barrels and all other metal parts – was installed, and, although initially distrusted by the workforce, they were progressively brought into service. Juxtaposed against this modernism, on Saturday mornings workers were paid with coins from a bucket by their overseers.

In an ideal world, BSA as a factory should have been flat out, with staff enjoying acceptable incomes. But much of their output went to the military… And dealing with overnments can be tricky. Some rivals, including the National Arms and Ammunition Company Ltd, were bankrupted – BSA later acquired their premises – and from the mid-1870s until near the end of the decade, BSA