New Light on the Early History of the Keyed Bugle Part I: The Astor ...

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HISTORIC BRASS SOCIETY JOURNAL
by him: seven-keyed, Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester, MPL 20, marked
“Royal Kent Bugle KEY / 20 Charing Cross / London / HALLIDAY INVENTOR”;
eight-keyed, National Music Museum, Vermillion, SD, no. 2376. 77 According to Sabine
Klaus, the latter is actually six-keyed and of great relevance for our purposes, because it is
engraved: “Tho s Key / 20 Charing Cross / SOLE VENDER / Royal Patent Kent Bugle /
N o = 1033 / HALLIDAY INVENTOR” 78 (see Figure 3). Thus it seems to have been one
of the instruments that Key was selling for Collins.
Figure 3: Thomas Key’s signature garland from a six-keyed bugle, London, ca.
1820, NMM 2376. National Music Museum, The University of South Dakota; Bill
Willroth Sr., Photographer; reproduced by permission.
Nine months after his first advertisement, in January 1820, Collins issued a similar
notice, elaborating on his threat of prosecution: “TO the ARMY, also to DEALERS in
MILITARY MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS ... I hereby caution the Army, that any Bugles
made on similar principles, sold by any other person, are spurious, and that the parties
concerned will be prosecuted.... GEORGE COLLINS, 19, Carey-street, Lincoln’s-innfields.”
79 Collins had in fact already begun such a prosecution in the Court of Chancery,
against John Green, a musical instrument dealer and publisher in Soho Square, London. The
Bill of Complaint from “George Collins of Carey Street, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, Middlesex,
gentleman” is dated 23 December 1819. 80
Collins begins by stating that letters patent, dated “on or about” 5 May 1810, were
granted to Joseph Haliday, master of the band of the Cavan Regiment of Militia, “then
quartered in Kilkenny.” Haliday had conceived that the improvements in the bugle would be
“of great use and advantage” to military music. The improvements had “not been practised