URGENT - Marking on Pattern 1907 bayonet

[Patrick Chadwick]

A dealer over here is offering a P1907 Enfield bayonet marked

U.C
O.T.C
901 (not quite clear, as everything has been lined out)

It has a tag attached: University College, Officers Training Corps.

Is this possible, or does the U.C stand for something else? Officers Training Corps as OTC is quite OK, but I cannot imagine an OTC with 901 bayonets! Or maybe the 901 was an OTC-unit number???

An if University College is plausible (despite the 901) then which one? University College London - or Oxford???

If anyone has a clue, please respond a.s.a.p. Online auction - urgent!

Patrick Chadwick

(graduate of ... University College ... so you can understand my interest!)

Information

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[Flying10uk]

Could the "U C" actually be "U O" indicating "University Officer's"? Quite easy to stamp things lop-sided.

I would have said that the "901" stands for something other than the number of bayonets.

[Patrick Chadwick]

It's definitely U.C - note the serif at the open top of the "C". Here's the link:

https://www.egun.de/market/item.php?id=14475771

[tiriaq]

Could it possibly be the last three digits of the serial number of the rifle?

[CINDERS]

Patrick it is an Officer Training Corps Junior Division the U C = University College School.
Pages 119 & 122 Skennertons The Broad Arrow MkII

Could be the rifles serial but I surmise it may just be a rack No. as in cadets at our school the 303's were stored by their rack No. not the serial.
So the bayonet could belong to rifle with the rack No. 901

[Flying10uk]

If "an establishment" had say 50 rifles and 50 bayonets which had to allocated to 50 positions/places on racks in an armoury and then the rifle, bayonet and position allocated an identification number, I would start at number one without giving too much thought to the matter, if I was asked to do the job. Would it be considered "normal practice" to mark the first position in an armoury rack with anything other than number one? If there were say, for example, 50 rifles and 50 bayonets with a corresponding 50 positions in the rack, if the first position on the rack was numbered up as 851, and the corresponding rifle and bayonet marked with that number, then the 50th and last bayonet would be 901. The alternative is that the Officer Training Corps had a large number of rifles and bayonets if numbering started at number one.

[Patrick Chadwick]

Thanks guys, for the response. No school would have had anything like 900 weapons ... but a university?
On the Victorian Rifleman forum, the University of Cambridge was proposed.

Cinders, could you look at Skennerton again? Could it be University of Cambridge? Or did they use a different abbreviation? They produced thousands of officers in WW1, and 901 would be a plausible number in this case.

[CINDERS]

The only Cambridge that comes up on page 119 is in the Senior Division is CAM = Cambridge and in the Junior Divisions again and is listed C.C.S = Cambridge and County School.

We going for a burn on our M/C's will look further along in both Ian's MKI & MkII books later on to see if there is anything else in either of the two of them.

At our cadet unit at high school we had approx 130 No.1 MKIII 303's of which 15 were range use only rifles not for parade use.
The others were for parades only also for stripping and cleaning practices these all had rack No.s.
There were no bayonets in the inventory that were issued we did have a few that were for an honour guard but apart from that they were kept under strict lock and key.
Also in the mix were 3 x Brens and a complete 3" mortar with which we gave a demo on the school oval with the initiator cartridges only it was hilarious the rounds went every where. Their flight was only @20-30m but most tumbled and well it was so funny, I think the school students and teachers watching it where aghast!

[Aragorn243]

Trying to remember my University days. I'm thinking our Cadet Corps at Penn State University numbered roughly 1000 cadets in the early 80's. As a Junior, there were 300 that started and about 150 that finished the year to move up to Senior. A lot of the Freshmen and Sophomores were at branch campuses and it took all of them together to get to that number. We certainly did not have that many weapons on campus. I'm not even sure if we had any on campus. I'm thinking any weapons the Cadet Corps had were stored on the military base we went to for training periodically.

Has no real relevance to the discussion at hand I suppose but got me thinking about old times.

Sadly the Cadet Corps the last time I talked with any of them about 12 years ago numbered a couple hundred. Changing times.

[CINDERS]

A more detailed look as I was in a hurry there is a reference on page 118 in Skennertons MkII that has O.T.C underscored with Cam = Cambridge which is above the senior division for OTC, so I gather these were already officers that were being commissioned to a higher rank.
O.T.C
CAM