For this edition of the Rigby Campfire blog, we step back through the pages of the Rigby ledgers with shooting writer and vintage British firearms expert Diggory Hadoke.
Drawing on original invoices and contemporary accounts, Diggory revisits a moment in 1898 when a young cavalry officer walked into John Rigby & Co.’s London premises and purchased two of the then-novel Mauser C96 pistols. That officer was Winston Churchill. From a dislocated shoulder in Bombay to the dust and confusion of Omdurman, this is the story of how preparation, circumstance and a visit to Rigby became quietly entwined with the course of modern history.
Winston Churchill, Omdurman and the Rigby Mausers
By Diggory Hadoke
To single out one event and claim that it changed the course of history is certainly contentious, but had Winston Churchill not entered the London premises of John Rigby & Co. one afternoon in 1898 it is very likely he would not have survived in his military service. Had that been the case, the world today would be a very different place.
Churchill suffered the consequences of an accident while disembarking from a boat in Bombay in 1896, badly dislocating his right arm. As he gripped an iron ring on the dock, the boat lurched away from it and wrenched Churchill’s shoulder from its socket.
The injury had lifelong repercussions and the shoulder routinely dislocated when he played polo, rolled over in his sleep or reached for a book on a high shelf. Later, he routinely wore a leather brace to restrict the range of movement.
As a cavalry officer, Churchill was expected to swing a sabre in his right hand when engaging the enemy. However, his injury made such activity impossible. Churchill’s answer was to buy from Rigby two of the, then novel, Mauser C96 pistols. They carried serial numbers 2373 and 4257. The Churchill archive contains an invoice from Rigby dated 1st November 1898 for the sum of £15. 2s. 0d. for two Mauser pistols and 1,000 rounds of ammunition. Typically for Churchill, who was notoriously tardy in settling his accounts, it was not paid until May 1901.
During the Battle of Omdurman, part of the Anglo-Egyptian conquest of Sudan during the Mahdist War, Churchill, then a young officer in the 21st Lancers, found himself in the thick of the British Army’s last formal cavalry charge. On 2 September 1898, the 21st charged a group of Mahdist warriors about two hundred strong.
As they approached the enemy, a much larger force of about three thousand emerged from a hitherto unseen dry water course and changed the odds significantly. Churchill engaged with his Mauser pistol, rather than the sabre he was unable to swing without dislocating his arm and used the ten-shot magazine to its full extent, narrowly escaping death.
He later wrote “On account of my shoulder I had always decided that if I were involved in hand-to-hand fighting, I must use a pistol and not a sword. I had practiced carefully with [the Mauser] during our march and journey up the river. This then, was the weapon with which I was determined to fight. I had first of all had to return my sword into its scabbard, which is not the easiest thing to do at a gallop. I had then to draw my pistol from its wooden holster and bring it to full cock…”
The engagement lasted only two or three minutes but the 21st Lancers lost 119 horses, twenty-two men and fifty wounded. Churchill recalled ‘horses spouting blood, men bleeding from terrible wounds, fish-hook spears stuck right through them, men gasping, crying, expiring’.
Churchill eventually bought a third Mauser C96 from Rigby on December 1, 1902 (No.3511). The dates recorded do create some confusion. If Churchill used his Rigby Mauser pistols at Omdurman on 2nd September 1898, which he certainly did, why do Rigby’s records state that he bought them in November of that year? It may be that the invoice was not sent until a later date…
Editor’s Note: The Outcome at Omdurman
On 2 September 1898, General Kitchener’s Anglo-Egyptian force decisively defeated the Mahdist army outside Omdurman. The Mahdist forces suffered catastrophic losses (estimated at around 10,000 killed) while British and Egyptian casualties were comparatively light. The battle effectively ended the organised Mahdist resistance and secured Anglo-Egyptian control of Sudan.
Churchill later wrote about the campaign in The River War, cementing his early reputation as both soldier and war correspondent.