Based at the Luckwell Works in Luckwell Road, Ashton Gate, Bristol, Humpage, Jacques & Pederson were once well known as makers of inspection and measuring equipment, machine tools, engineering accessories - and even a few motorcycles. Of the partners, Pederson was possible the most interesting with an account of his varied life available here. Today surviving examples of the Company's products are rare and the lathe below is one of few survivors of its type - though unfortunately it might not be by Humpage, Jacques & Pedersen but by the concern who made an identical lathe branded as the better-known Pfeil.
Of approximately 3.5- inch centre height and around 26" between centres it carries a screw-on maker's plate proclaiming "No. 69" with a manufacturing date of 1906. Of typically Victorian light-lathe design (and as found from the early years of the 1800s) the headstock had a spindle carried in a bearing at the front and supported against a hardened centres at the other end. This economical design was surprisingly effective and, as the drive was by a round leather "gut" rope from a treadle-powered flywheels, perfectly adequate for the modest rates of metal removal that the lathe could achieve.
Bereft of micrometer dials - as were all other small lathes at the time, the compound slide rest was fitted with awkward-to-operate crank handles and, in all probability, crack-handed screws with a right-hand thread that caused the slides to move in the opposite sense to that required i.e. turning the handwheel to the right caused the slide to move towards the operator instead of away.