[Bell Historians] Joseph Scot

[Carl S Zimmerman]

David ... asked:

>Has anybody heard of a bell hanger called Joseph Scot?
>
>He is mentioned in a book on the old snickleways (alleys) of Tewkesbury as
>"a white smith and a bell hanger", but there is no date associated with this
>information.

to which John Ketteringham replied:
>You will find in many of the Trade Directories tradesmen described
>as 'bell hangers' who were in fact installers of the call bells used
>to summon servants etc in the great houses.

Not surprisingly, the same thing happened in America. There is a 
period in the 19th c. when city directories for places such as 
St.Louis categorized quite a number of tradesmen under the heading 
"locksmiths and bell hangers". My hypothesis is that this came about 
because both door locks and call bell systems used relatively high 
precision (for the time) brass castings. I believe that in the 
earliest part of this period, locksmiths were still making their own 
locks, while later on they would have been installing items that had 
been mass produced elsewhere.

-- 
=Carl Scott Zimmerman= Co-Webmaster: http://www.gcna.org/
Voicemail: +1-314-361-5194 (home) mailto:csz_stl at s...
Saint Louis, Missouri, USA - 19th c. home of up to 33 bell foundries