United Kingdom. A Howell of London "Pathfinder" Officers Swagger Stick with Trench Light, c.1937

An extremely well made swagger stick with a lower portion fabricated from bamboo and is surmounted by a hollow brass handle, all of which is wrapped in reddish-brown leather and stitched together along the seam. There is an 18.5 mm (w) x 18 mm (h) brass window appearing in the shaft that incorporates a sliding brass door and when opened, reveals a small glass light bulb. Stamped on the leather just below the window is the model identification, " "PATHFINDER" REGd PRO.PAT. 28322", with the "HOWELL LONDON" manufacturer's white plastic button inset into the leather just below the stamping. The stick comes with a leather-wrapped brass cap in the handle and when removed, reveals a hollow brass battery compartment. The stick measures 22 mm in diameter x 620 mm in length, exhibiting wear in the leather at both the bottom and on the cap, along with overall scuffing. Very fine. Footnote: The original Howell shop was established at 76 Aldersgate in London in 1832 by Henry Howell's father, John Howell, selling high-class hosiery and a variety of fashion accessories, including walking canes. After John’s wife, Sarah, died in 1851, the shop was jointly operated by John, his son Henry, and daughter Amelia. A few years later, a nephew, Jonathan, was recruited as an apprentice from a branch of the family living in Wiltshire. Among the high end accessories offered in the family business would have been a line of fashionable walking canes. In 1859, Henry married a widow named Sarah Akerman, whose first husband had been a manufacturer of walking sticks for the wholesale market. Three years later, Henry had left the family shop at Aldersgate and established a cane merchandising business under his own name on Old Street in London in a building formerly occupied by James Thomas Akerman, a long time manufacturer of walking sticks, parasols, and umbrellas. It is unclear whether Henry purchased and took over the existing cane works, or if he began from scratch, merely occupying the site of the former manufactory. What is known is that Henry Howell & Company flourished as a business, expanded rapidly to become one of the world’s leaders in the production of high quality walking sticks, and made Henry Howell a very wealthy man. In 1867, Jonathan Howell, Henry's cousin and the sole remaining proprietor of the original family store on Aldersgate, closed shop and joined his cousin Henry in the manufacturing of canes. Henry and Jonathan continued to expand the firm together until 1888, when Henry, a childless widower, died and left everything he owned to Jonathan. By 1895, Henry Howell & Co. employed 460 people and declared itself the largest single manufacturer of walking sticks in the world. Such was the quality of the work that, in 1900, the company was awarded the Grand Prix at the Paris Industrial Exhibition. On November 4th, 1903, a limited company, Henry Howell and Company Limited, was formed by Jonathan Howell, George Short and Edwin Short in order to 'acquire and take over as a going concern the business now carried on at No. 180, Old Street, and elsewhere, in the County of London, under the style or firm of "Henry Howell & Co.", and all or any of the assets and liabilities of the proprietors of that business'. Jonathan Howell became the company's Managing Director and Chairman, with George Short and Edwin Short as Directors. Shares were issued to the value of £60,000 to seven shareholders. The business continued to thrive for many more years under the able stewardship of Jonathan Howell and probably reached its pinnacle around 1910. The 1909-1919 entry in the Post Office Business Register reads: "Howell, Henry & Co Ltd. stick makers, wholesale and export manufacturers of umbrella sticks and walking canes, spécialité natural sticks of every description; importers and dealers in all kinds of foreign canes and sticks; walking and umbrella sticks mounted in gold, silver and ivory to suit the home, colonial and foreign markets: manufacturers of hunting crops and riding whips." The company's entry in the 1920 British Industries Fair (London) Catalogue reads: "Manufacturers of High-class Walking Sticks and Canes, Umbrella and Sunshade Handles and Sticks for all markets, also Hunting Crops, Riding Whips, Horse Measures, Presentation Canes (mounted in Silver, Gold, Ivory, Horn, Erinoid), Carved Heads, etc. Officers’ Canes, Soldiers’ Swagger Canes, Leather‑covered Canes, Folding Walking Sticks. Specialists in Natural Sticks of every description, Drum Majors’ and Chiefs’ Staves, etc." Henry Howell & Co., however, was destined to suffer greatly in the wake of the First World War. A devastating loss of many of the skilled labourers needed to man the factory, along with a simultaneous somber turning away of the public’s taste for the frivolities of fashion, and further accompanied by an unfortunate series of dry winters that decimated the umbrella portion of the business, all worked together to drain the company of its assets, weakening its financial position in the years between the wars. Shortly after Jonathan Howell’s death in 1934, the new directors, in a desperate effort to maintain a forward-looking position, invested the remainder of the company’s cash reserves in the building of a new factory at Burnt Oak, Hendon. The decline, though, continued and the company was liquidated in July of 1936. On August 27, 1936, a new incarnation, Henry Howell (1936) Limited was registered. The company managed to make it through the turbulent years of the Second World War, but on March 14th, 1947, Henry Howell (1936) Limited was placed into voluntary liquidation.