William Grice
William Grice, gun maker of Birmingham
c.1714 Born
Likely to be the person referred to as "Will son of John Grice of Handsworth", who was apprenticed to a locksmith, John Smith, in Birmingham in 1730 (John Smith made gunlocks).
By 1767 he lived in Bull Street. It may be that for a time his business was based where he lived, and then moved to Sand Street, an area which became part of the gun quarter. Sand Street was an area similar to the Jewellery Quarter, where ordinary houses were turned into factories. Alternatively, it may be that the workshops were in Sand Street and the shop or headquarters in Bull Street, which was a fashionable shopping street at the time.
1776 Grice's firm supplied the first British rifles for the British army against the American rebels, as he established the "pattern" for the rifles from a German model, then supplied two hundred of the eight hundred rifles supplied in Birmingham by four gunmakers (the others being Mathias Barker, Benjamin Willets and Galton and Sons - the business of Samuel Galton who was a member of the Lunar Society). Two hundred more were obtained from Hannover.
1790 died in London.