Winchester 73 "The Daisy Rifle"

Welcome back to another Owen Guns Firearm Friday! This week we’re pulling a particularly interesting old Winchester out of the museum, and while everyone knows the Winchester name, you may not have heard of one made especially for the Australian market: “The Daisy Rifle.”

Sitting in the Owen Guns Museum is this well-used Winchester Model 1873, serial number 498582B, chambered in .32 W.C.F. ”32/20 Winchester Centre Fire” and fitted with a full-length magazine and octagonal barrel. At first glance it looks like a classic old Model 1873 that has seen plenty of years of honest use. Look a little closer at the barrel, however, and there is a marking that makes this Winchester particularly interesting to Australian collectors: “THE DAISY RIFLE.”

The Winchester Model 1873 needs little introduction. Introduced in 1873 and descended from Winchester's earlier repeating rifles, it became one of the company's most famous lever actions. Its combination of a tubular magazine, lever-operated action and relatively handy repeating-firearm design made the 1873 enormously successful. It was offered in several chamberings during its long production life, including the .32 W.C.F. chambering found in our museum example.

But the "Daisy" name isn't a Winchester model in the conventional sense, nor does it have anything to do with the famous Daisy air rifles. Instead, it takes us from New Haven, Connecticut, all the way to colonial Australia and the enormous Sydney merchant F. Lassetter & Co.

Lassetter & Co. was a major Australian retailer and importer that sold an extraordinary range of goods during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Among the firearms it imported were genuine Winchester rifles from the United States. Rather than simply selling every Winchester under its normal model designation, Lassetter arranged for certain firearms destined for the Australian market to carry distinctive trade names.

For the Model 1873, one of those names was “THE DAISY RIFLE.”

Importantly, this wasn't simply a nickname subsequently scratched or engraved onto rifles after they reached Australia. Winchester Arms Collectors Association historian Bert Hartman confirms that the Daisy marking was factory applied by Winchester to firearms exported for F. Lassetter & Co. Collector research has identified several different Lassetter markings, including “THE DAISY RIFLE,” “THE DAISY CARBINE,” “THE DAISY SINGLE SHOT RIFLE” and, with the arrival of the Model 1892, “THE NEW DAISY RIFLE.”

Period trade-marking research specifically identifies “The Daisy Rifle” as a Model 1873 Winchester made for F. Lassetter & Co., with the designation recorded from approximately 1889 onward. The same source distinguishes it from the later Model 1892, which Lassetter marketed as “The New Daisy Rifle.”

That distinction is important on our rifle because its octagonal barrel still clearly carries the original “THE DAISY RIFLE” marking. Elsewhere we find Winchester's New Haven barrel address and King's Improvement patent information, MODEL 1873, 32 W.C.F., and the serial number 498582B. The serial number places this rifle in 1895, making it a late-production Third Model 1873 and now more than 130 years old. By this stage the Model 1873 was sharing Winchester's catalogue with newer designs, including John Browning's Model 1892, but Australian buyers were clearly still purchasing the older 1873. The Daisy name continued to distinguish Lassetter's Australian-market guns.

And these Australian Winchesters weren't necessarily destined to spend their lives sitting above fireplaces.

Australia in the late nineteenth century was a huge market for practical sporting and working firearms. Rifles went onto stations, farms and remote properties where they were tools rather than collector pieces. Research into surviving Australian Winchesters shows many of the Daisy and similar Australian trade-marked rifles consequently turn up today showing considerable use.

Our Daisy certainly looks the part.

The metal has aged to a deep brown patina and the timber carries more than a century's worth of knocks, scratches and handling marks. Thankfully, the important markings remain remarkably legible. Rather than detracting from the rifle as a museum piece, that wear is part of its story. Somewhere between Winchester's factory in Connecticut, Lassetter's Australian operation and eventually the Owen Guns Museum in Gympie, this rifle has lived a working life.

There is also one feature on our Daisy that definitely wasn't there when Winchester made it in 1895.

Running almost the entire length of the barrel is a huge brass 4×15 telescopic sight. The scope is identified as a Navy Arms scope. So while the scope looks wonderfully at home sitting over a nineteenth-century Winchester, it is a much later addition. It was deliberately designed in the style of the long telescopic sights associated with nineteenth-century rifles. In our case, it has subsequently become part of this particular Daisy's history. Rather than presenting the rifle as an untouched factory example, we can see it as something that continued being owned, altered and used long after 1895.

Interestingly, the Daisy wasn't the only Australian Winchester to receive its own identity. Queensland had its own famous counterpart. Perry Brothers of Brisbane sold specially marked Winchesters under the name “The Stinger.” Later Model 1892s supplied through Lassetter became the “New Daisy Rifle.” These rifles are now fascinating reminders that the story of Winchester in Australia wasn't simply one of importing American guns, Australian retailers created their own recognisable identities around them.

That is what makes this old .32 particularly deserving of its place in the Owen Guns Museum. It isn't the finest-condition Winchester 1873 you'll ever see, and it certainly isn't untouched after 131 years. But it is unmistakably Australian. It is a genuine Winchester Model 1873 manufactured in America for an Australian retailer, carrying a special Winchester-applied Australian-market name, apparently used for generations and later fitted with a wonderfully old-fashioned Navy Arms brass scope.

From New Haven to Lassetter & Co., through more than a century of Australian history and eventually to the Owen Guns Museum in Gympie, there probably aren't many old rifles that could tell us everywhere they've been if only they could talk.

That's it for another Owen Guns Firearm Friday! If you're ever wandering through the museum and spot a long old Winchester with an enormous brass telescope sitting on top, have a closer look at the barrel, because this isn't just another Model 1873. This one's a Daisy.

See you next Friday when we dig something else out of the Owen Guns Museum and find out what story it's been hiding!