SP, thank you for letting us see Perkin's letter. That is a real treasure and it certainly ties Perkin into the ...Spring School and into the art of lock making.
Dick
You're welcome. Perkin practiced this trade in the brothers' house in the Moravian congregation at Bristol, UK, in the 1760s. I posted this (too) many years ago in some thread on this site:
Perkins was a member of the single brothers' choir of the Bristol Moravian congregation as early as 1766. In April 1766 a boy named John Waters (also a Moravian) was apprenticed to Perkin "for seven years to learn the Gun Lock Smith Trade." When the single brothers rebuilt their house in July 1766, they included a shop for Perkin; they were later going to establish a "Ironmonger's Shop," with Perkin as "workman," but they abandoned this idea in January 1767--though Perkin was allowed to continue his "traffic in the Gunlock way." Perkin's "Gunlock Trade" was doing well: the pastor reported that "their Orders increase very much" by November 1766 and by March of the next year the single brothers agreed to "enlarge the shop" because Perkin didn't have "Room enough in his shop for himself and John Waters to work."