R. T. Pritchett

Robert Taylor Pritchett (24 February 1828 – 16 June 1907) was a gun manufacturer, artist and illustrator. As artist he painted royal ceremonies for Queen Victoria, and he illustrated Darwin's The Voyage of the Beagle.

Early life and career

He was the son of Richard Ellis Pritchet and his wife Ann Dumbleton; his father was head of the firm of gunmakers at Enfield which supplied arms to the East India Company and to the Board of Ordnance. After leaving King's College School, Robert entered his father's firm. By 1852 he knew the rifle designer William Ellis Metford; the "Pritchett bullet", with a hollow, unplugged base, which he and Metford invented in 1853, brought him fame and an award of £1,000 (equivalent to £110,000 in 2025) from the government on its adoption by the small-arms committee. As early as 1854 Pritchett was using his three-grooved rifle of his own invention.

The abolition of the East India Company in 1858 deprived Pritchett's firm of its principal customer, and he sought other interests; but for some years he kept in touch with military rifle matters (partly through the Victoria Rifles, which corps he joined at its foundation in 1853), and he lectured on gunlocks and rifles at the Working Men's College and elsewhere. He interested himself in 1854 in the foundation of that college, of which Frederick Denison Maurice and Charles Kingsley were among the pioneers. He remained a liveryman of the Gunmakers' Company until his death.

Art

Art was an important occupation. He exhibited views of Belgium and Brittany at the Royal Academy of Art in 1851 and 1852. He formed friendships with John Leech, Charles Keene, and Birket Foster. Through John Tenniel he joined the staff of Punch, for which he executed some 26 drawings between 1863 and 1869. In 1865 he sketched in Skye and the Hebrides, and next year he executed 100 illustrations for Cassell, Petter and Galpin.