Tom Collins – The Southern Armoury

Our good buddy Art has another gun story for us, this time about owning a 1911 .45 auto in the UK.  The 1911 is one of my all time favorite firearms.  I enjoyed reading Art’s story and I’m sure you will, too.

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On March 10th, 1984, 39 years after its manufacture, the Colt 1911A1 with serial number 2322134 became all mine, along with a mere 150 FMJ rounds and a bottle of Hoppe’s No. 9 (ah, that sweet aroma).  My new addition cost me the grand sum of £150 ($192) for the gun, the total bill being £183.65 ($236) for the ammo and cleaner.

The Southern Armoury at 171 New Kent Road in southeast London was a small, nondescript shop tucked in between others. Far from salubrious, the battered front door and dirty shutters belied the fact that its owner, Tom Collins, would stock some very obscure ammo and classic guns from the bellicose Victorian era right up to the latest in firearms. To keep it all low key and to prevent wannabees and Walter Mittys, his drudgey shop window would uninvitedly be filled with airguns, pellets, targets and old shotguns. This small, honest-to-God shop was always busy with a throng of two-or-three deep patiently waiting people.  Tom and his wife used to live upstairs from the shop which had an old clock outside that everyone used as a marker point. It held good time and was too high to be vandalized or stolen.

Whenever I used to ring up and ask for the price of something, Tom would think for a second and mumble “about £20.” I would then offer to send him a check for “about £20” which would have him scuttling away for the proper price. It never failed.

Tom had a penchant for the most obscure adverts via the shooting press. We’d all stand around discussing this at the shooting club and wonder what the hell had gotten into him for producing some seriously mercurial stuff, sometimes involving cartoon balloon texts, barrels of black powder, an old sailing vessel and a circus elephant.

The other aspect also open for frequent and frivolous discussion was Tom’s toupee, which seemed to have a life of its own. Ill-fitting would not even begin to describe it.  At first it looked like his head was nursing a few semi-comatose gray squirrels, such was the thing’s mobility when perched on top of his head. We swore that it would stay in one spot every time he turned his head, and we’d place silent bets where the parting would be from one day to the next. It was doubtful that Tom knew which was the front or rear.

The quality of Tom’s math was suspect and as he refused to use a calculator, quite a few clients walked out of his shop having been undercharged. Some of these actually bought from him again, hoping he’d make the same mistake.

One of my shooting club members, Bob Wade, gave me a handwritten note about the serial numbers range of all the contracted 1911A1 manufacturers. Mine was about 6000 away from the last Colt batch in 1945. My gun was nothing special, although the slide and frame numbers were matched, it seemed that most of the other parts weren’t. Not that it mattered much. The original grips were discarded for some Pachmayrs and my clunker shot well. I don’t think I ever bought more ammo for it. Another club member reloaded for me but the solid lead bullets he had were never supposed to be used in an auto and just wouldn’t cycle properly. The guy was also known for not taking a double load too seriously, so I never asked him again. When he later died in a scuba diving accident and the facts of his miscalculations became known to us, none of us were surprised.

My wife and I took a long weekend in Yorkshire and my .45 with two full mags came with me just in case there was an opportunity for some unofficial target shooting. This came in the shape of a little ensconced lay-by at the side of a quiet country road with 12′ high sloping chalk walls. As I was busy examining my shot placements on a small discarded gas canister, the crunching of gravel alerted me to see a very curious cyclist who arrived out of nowhere and was wondering where the hell those shots had come from. He took off when he saw me and so did we – in the opposite direction. My only visual memories exist in saving four distorted slugs out of the chalk.

In 1987 the Southern Armoury closed its doors for good. Tom and his wife were getting old and tired, and it would only be a few years later that Tom hung up his toupee for good, leaving behind a plethora of old memories that the old dogs like myself are only too fond of recollecting.  The old clock is no longer there and the last time I drove past there, the shop had sacrilegiously become a hairdresser.

Although I sold my Colt around 1990, the new owner must have been one of the 40,000 pistol shooters who had to say farewell to their belongings during the 1997 pistol ban. My old .45 is probably part of a manhole cover somewhere in China where its American spirit continues to be part of the old guard who will never retire or capitulate.

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I think all of us with a few miles under our belt have a story or two about a favorite old gunstore, a favorite old gunstore proprietor, or a favorite old gun.   Mine cover places like Barney’s in El Paso, the Rutgers gun shop in Highland Park, Treptow’s in Milltown, Starkey’s (another El Paso shop), and more.  They’re mostly all gone today, but wow…the memories.

Do you have a favorite memory?  Hey, drop us a line in the Comments section, or maybe even write a guest blog for us (send it to us at info@ExhaustNotes.us).  We love hearing from our readers.  And Art, thanks for another great tale!

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