Hi folks, found these few items. I know the forks are solid silver and the spoon isn’t. But I’m still curious about all the stamps - particularly on the spoon. If anyone knows I’d be very grateful! Cheers!
The spoon is by James Dixon & Sons, Sheffield:
Probably sometime between 1881, when the “trumpet” mark appeared, and 1920, when they become James Dixon & Sons LTD.
The hallmark on the plain-handled fork is London, 1783.
The maker appears to be Hester Bateman:
1 Like
I was making my post while you were posting. When I started typing, you hadn’t responded.
The later fork is showing a hallmark for London, 1845:
Thank you so much for the help!! Really appreciated
Any thoughts on what the 4372 means on the spoon? And the marking above that?
Also what do people think the knight’s arm and sword means?
Since the arm and sword mark is appearing on two forks made decades apart, and by different silversmiths, I would assume that it’s the personal armorial mark of the owner of the forks.
1 Like
Fascinating thank you. Would be amazing to find out which family!
On silverplate, random numbers are usually just the maker’s model number. They’re almost never documented. Not sure about the mark above it…
ETA: Those markings are particularly puzzling. They’re on the top surface of the handle, rather than the underside. That’s usually where a piece might be marked with something like the name of a hotel, railroad, or passenger ship. But these markings are rather crude, as if they’d been gouged out by hand. Very odd, indeed.
My mum wondered if it could have been used in a prison? Or maybe another institution? Could have been someone’s identity number they carved into their own spoon? We’re entirely perplexed
You appear to have acquired a modest hoard of Macpherson silver. In the old days I would have urged you to get it back to them ASAP but today they are relatively benign.
Here’s wikipedia on with a potted history of them:
The badge for the clan is a left ( sinister) arm blazoned holding a dagger. The right hand was for the sword.
https://www.gg.ca/en/heraldry/public-register/project/3277
If you are curious about how the cutlery started out its useful life here is a list of some of the clans residences.
https://www.scotlandshop.com/en-ca/tartanblog/castles-clan-macpherson
Now it has to be said, well it doesn’t but I am going to anyway, this is a clan that seems to get on the wrong side of the woke crowd down through the generations and do very nicely out of it. Which is presumably why they could afford the Bateman silver you have.
They supported both the’15 and the’45 uprising of " the King across the water" that wastrel Charles Edward Stuart, aka “Bonny Prince Charlie”. This cost them pretty much everything.
But they came up with “cunning scheme” to get it all back, chuck the crofters off the few bits of land they had managed to hang onto and bring on sheep. The Macphersons didn’t invent highland clearances but their tacksmen were brutally efficient at it.
All this got then enough dosh to get into another sweet deal. Jamaican sugar. They ran four plantations in Jamaica and upon abolition owned some 422 slaves ranging in age from 2 years to 37 years. If you managed to survive for 37 years cutting cane you were pretty sturdy. We know this because upon abolition of slavery they were paid out large sums of compensation by Lord Grey’s government. It upsets my friends in the US the owners got the compensation not the slaves but, as the old expression goes. “slaves happen when you party naked” Maybe the "s"word isn’t slaves but you get the idea.
The Helmsdale estate was one of theirs. Windsor was another. A Giller Prize dinner which happened to seat me next to Canadian Author Larry Hill “Book of Negroes” got me interested in this topic.
CRWW
1 Like
They sound like real charmers. 
Honestly, they were pretty standard issue 18th century and earlier Scots clansmen. I married one of the descendants of the lot that owned Dunvegan Castle back then. We got married there and I was entertained by stories of dinner invites getting issued to embattled foes from other clans and having to call the plumbers in.
Not Nixonian plumbers real ones. Toilets for castles then consisting of turrets at each corner with chimneys or straight pipes going down to the moat. Anyway the guests had all been murdered and thrown does the toilets by their hosts which had blocked them up. Hence the need for plumbers.
Now, to be fair, if you are a member of a clan your name is the clan name or used to be. So a lot of the Scots-descendant policeman in Toronto and New York called Macpherson aren’t the thatch-burning, cottage-evicting, slave-trading bosses. Their ancestors are the folks who got traded in for something with four legs they could shear profitably once a year.
CRWW
My paternal grandmother was a MacFarlane. One of my uncles did a lot of digging into the family genealogy, scouring parish records. He concluded that we were, “descended from a long line of domestics and pastry cooks.”
As I scooped up all the paper records and started entering the info into a genealogy app (“Hello, posterity!”), I also discovered several instances of first cousins marrying. Explains a lot.
1 Like
Actually back in the day almost everybody married cousins, first second or third didn’t matter much. Once removed was pretty good if you could keep up with a younger wife.
James Watt put an end to it. You will recall he was the guy who partnered with Boulton to build the Soho factory in Birmingham which enabled Hester who made these forks to get so rich.
He invented a steam engine which could travelon a rail which meant, in the 19th century, people were going and finding other people’s daughters to annoy by travelling on the railway trains.
The only people who didn’t take advantage of the Watt invention and “tap some strange” – to borrow Charlie Sheen vernacular-- were royalty. Which, if you think about it, is just keeping what Prince Phillip called “the family business” in the family.
He and Lizzy were cousins too. Apparently it’s a great help with communications. Your current king talks to flowers with the same facility most struggle to speak to their own kin.
CRWW
Not my king! I’m a “murkan.”
That is all so interesting thank you! What took you to the Giller Prize dinner?