1907 Patt Bayonet (Wilkinson) Date Line?

A non shooting friend of mine has just bought a small collection of bayonets and asked my advice as to identification of some of the markings.
In reality they are all unremarkably with the exception of one which is marked "SRM" (Sir Roger Manwood School) and has a tear dropped frog stud.
My thoughts are that given the size of the school during the period of the Great War the armoury would not have had more that say two dozen rifles making that particular marking quite scarce.

The other bayonets are marked Wilkinson Pall Mall and have (obvious replacments) WWII Australian scabbards, my query is when did Wilkinson drop "Pall Mall" from the stamping on the blade, the year dates are not obvious and I suspect have been cleaned away in recent years by unskilled hands!

I just aquired a Wilkinson Pall Mall that is dated '26.

Sorry, pardon my ignorance. It is dated '17, then reworked in '26.


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Pall Mall was their London "Shop" from my understanding the Pall Mall were privatley purchased items, used by schools, and military persosn not issued bayonets. Although this may not be right. I have a private school issued 1907 and they can trace the guy down who it was issued to as they were allowed to keep their blade when they went into service. Strangley that school had a fantastic library etc. but did not have a single one of their marked 07's, we were workign for them and i was going to take it up there and laon it to them but moved to the US before i managed the visit.

That school was in fact a 'public' school and their Officer Training Unit/Corps would have been supplied by the government via the usual Ordnance system.

These public school Cadet Forces were a large part of the school and up until recently, every boy had to do a year in the Cadet Force. Some did many more of course......... As a result, the pre-war and up until the mid 60's school OTC/Cadet Force, including my own school was a large part of the school so you should think in terms of many hundreds. Some even had their own Army band. Indeed, during the 1937 Aldershot Tattoo, where 1,000 bandsmen formed part of the massed bands, 7 schools provide bands

Hi Peter, I think for the benefit of Carl in Houston and everyone else in the USA, what we Brits refer to as a 'Public' school over here is very much the same as what Americans will think of over there as a 'Private' school. I may be mistaken, but I think that their public schools are equivalent to our state run comprehensives.
Also, I believe that pre-war British public schools probably had an 'Officer Training Corps' instead of a cadet force and these OTC lads would probably have had to purchase much of their own kit ... and for that privilege, come 1939, would have been drafted straight into the front line (I suspect).

Point taken about the Public Schools, Private schools and state schools. I don't know whether the Cadets would have to purchase their kit while in the school Cadets. How would they have gone about getting Daddy to buy the rifle and bayonets? Once they got into the real Army I expect they'll have had to buy certain bits of kit.

As a bit of humour, the local newspapers here were calling the local comprehensive development schools by just the initials LCD until some wag decided that LCD indicated a Lowest Common Denominator school. The initials were changed immediately!