Show & Tell Meeting in the Heritage Rooms 20th April

[Brian Morland]

Apologies were received from Brian Philpot and Paul Chandler. Paul had suffered from a ruptured appendix but is now recovering well; we all wish him a speedy recovery and look forward to seeing him soon.

Doors opened at 10 am and conversations and networking vibrantly followed with friendships made or rekindled; topics included Exhibiting at other venues in addition to MLA EXPO25, sending out hard copy programs to other Midlands Historical Groups, and extra itinerary field trips – I’m sure some artefact negotiations took place as well…

The Main Topic of the day was a Show & Tell and proved very enlightening. Various locks were brought along by members including several Barron’s, a nice Hamiltons patent liquid lock, and a Ratner concentric combination lock all of which the combined group knowledge greatly increased the owners understanding. The Barron’s raised more questions than answers and it was decided that we devote one gathering to this lock. Not only was it the first patented double acting principle, it was produced in various configurations such as up to four levers on a single bit key, it was also produced in a double bit version and also with a fly mechanism, the question is was Robert or Francis Barron that continued to develop the lock; hence the decision to devote more research and discussion on it.

The only item that drew no information was a very unusual key so we throw this out to the wider membership and have included a few pictures. Do you know anything about this key?

[Gary Stephenson]

very unusual thing, wonder if the spelling Detecter rather than Detector gives any clues, Chubb always seemed to use Detector on the ones I have seen

[Brian Morland]

Another point Gary is that although the key is marked 'patent' nothing has been found in the British patent abridgements, so maybe its one that was 'applied for' but not granted...

The mystery deepens