Boosey & Hawkes was founded in 1930 with the merger of two respected music companies; Boosey and Co. and Hawkes & Son. Both were manufacturers of woodwind instruments and publishers of music. Like other notable london music firms (John Grey & Son, Rudall & Carte, Miller Browne) they, at one point or another, had bagpipes made and branded under their own name.
Boosey & Hawkes purchased what was left of the Henry Starck business around 1955 or 1956. They immediately shut down Starck’s bagpipe making operation however continued with the flute making business. Les Cowell had presumably already left Starck and was making bagpipes for Rudall Carte Ltd. Boosey and Hawkes also purchased Rudall Carte in 1955. According to Les Cowell, there were three possible makers of bagpipes stamped Boosey & Hawkes being Starck, Lawrie, and Miller Browne.
We know that Henry Starck was a flute maker prior to his partnership with William Ross. His flutes endure today. He probably also made flutes that were private branded and I suspect he was the maker of bagpipes branded by all three firms (and others) mentioned in the first paragraph.
Aside from the picture of the chanter stamped “Boosey & Co.” all other images are stamped “Boosey & Hawkes. The profiles and style of all these images point to Starck. Boosey & Hawkes still exists and I believe there is a museum on site with about 80 sets of bagpipes from around the world.
When you study the various profiles, details, and unique features of these bagpipes, it is not difficult to see Starck manufacturing. For instance, the image showing the inside of the ferrule (above) reveals tiny barbs in the nickel. This is uniquely Starck. They would score the inside of the ferrules, heat the ferrule so it would expand, put the ferrule into place and then cool it. The ferrule would shrink and in so doing, the barbs would become embedded into the wood. These ferrules rarely came loose.
This email was received with respect to the Boosey & Hawkes bagpipe pictured above….
“As for the gentleman that originally played this instrument, his name (I’m told) was Robert MacRae Robertson, and fought during the First World War. I’m led to believe that he was with a Scottish regiment (not sure which) and immigrated to Australia later. I’m not certain if he participated in WW2. Robert died some 30 years or so ago, and his wife had told the piper (Robert Scot – who later gave them to me) at the service, after she gave him these pipes, that at one time during WW1 Robert was playing at a military funeral on the front with another piper when disaster struck. Apparently, the two pipers had been marching pass one another, about facing and then marching toward one another once again while the funeral party conducted its business. It was while they were furthest apart that a bomb fell from the sky and directly hit the funeral party. Unfortunately, the other piper had turned early and was closer to the funeral party and was killed with the funeral party. As for Robert, he had just turned and faced the funeral party when the explosion occurred, the force of the explosion blowing him backward, stripping him of clothing and injuring him. Robert is buried not too far from here at a town called Cootamundra.”
