British ' Burnside ' Safe Company

[safeman]

And the final part. I would be most interested to hear from anyone who has seen any of the heavier safes or SRD shown, as actual pictures or accounts of them would be most interesting.

Hello again Oldlock,

The Birmingham Safe Co. & Burnside Safes.
When you posted the very comprehensive Birmingham Safe Co. Burnside catalogue some time ago I was astonished at the range of products from such a small company. You asked at the time if any other comments were forthcoming. Out of character I resisted but it’s been niggling at me ever since. Burnside had usually been recognised as the lightest of all safes with ⅜” door plates and ⅛” bodies as borne out by their earlier publications.

The main niggle though was that their parent company, the Birmingham Safe Company Ltd, which was formed in 1899, only lasted for 7 years being dissolved in 1908. Although they had been trading for some years before, Wm .Henry Wakefield was making cycle components, cisterns, and parts for rifles and revolvers before registering as a safe maker. Before then he had also been selling safes which were probably supplied by the Bent Steel Safe Company who acted as makers on behalf of many small companies who did not have the necessary facilities such as box presses.
A logical explanation could be that they came to an arrangement with the Samuel Withers Company who undertook the manufacture of their full range of heavy equipment including strong room doors and crane-hinged watertight cash safes under the Burnside name as a badge engineered second string which would allow them two bites of the cherry when quoting in the overseas market.
It was not unusual for safe makers at time to have co-operative relationships with their contemporaries. Whitfields with Milners, Tann with Worralls and Hobbs Hart some time later at times when they were overwhelmed by large orders, particularly overseas.
Samuel Withers was a giant of a company who claimed to supply most Government Departments, Banks, Admiralty, Crown Agents, and the War Office and the Post Offices of England and India. They eventually succumbed in 1967 to being taken over by a company called Safes Ltd who then became part of Borewood Holdings, owners of the Stratford Safe Company. This included other well known makers such as Phillips, Hipkins, Birmingham, Perry and Cartwright. At takeover Samuel Withers carried an outstanding order for almost 2000 cheap export safes for the export market!
If I had access to a Withers “Samco” catalogue I would have more confidence in the above theory.


Attached: Bent Steel Safe Co. Burnside & S.Withers.