Mau Mau Rebellion?
 

Hi,
In my first post about the Jerzail Matchlock (incorrectly identified/named by me) I mentioned a couple of rifles. This one was gifted by the antique shop owner as part of the purchase. It was stated that there may have been a connection to the Mau Mau rebellion. To me this musket looks homemade and I have no idea if it was ever functional. I googled the rebellion and found out that many weapons where improvised. Could this be one of them?

To be honest I did not know what “Ethnographic” meant until I looked it up. I believe that this musket could fit into this category. If not please delete this post. I hope that you find the photographs interesting.

Cheers Jack

Archaic for Mau Mau
 

Triple Jack,

Here my impressions (again with the caveat that I’m no firearms expert). You have another cap lock here and it appears to be a muzzle loader. I can’t be sure about the muzzle loader part because the breach looks really, really odd. Since the Roland White cartridge patient expired on Dec 11, 1869 and the Mau Mau uprising happened 1920-1963, if the insurrectionists were using muzzle loading caplocks, they were sadly outgunned because the Brits were certainly armed with breach loading cartridge firearms. Your bore photo shows that your long gun is a smoothbore and, judging by the grip (with checkering on it), it began life as a sporting arm. I think that you should take your photos and any letters/serial numbers to a shotgun expert for ID. You should also ask about dismantling the gun so you can stop the live rust on the steel parts.

Sincerely,
RobT