Wooden chest containing a copper boiler and raw materials su...

Hammer

£40

Wooden chest containing a copper boiler and raw materials sufficient to make several boilers, body tube, end plates etc, the chest personalised for Peter Russell Aitken and with SS Llandovery Castle luggage label. 
Peter Russell Aitken born 2nd April 1890, died 1976, son of a Leith merchant,  Peter was a clever engineer, a batchelor most of his life he was widely travelled, (Fiji, Mozambique and  South Africa) and in Colonial Service.  During WW1 was employed by the Ministry of Supply, procuring search lights and anti-aircraft guns.

In retirement he took over his mother’s large glasshouse in Edinburgh and filled it with his machine tools and materials for his hobby of making steam powered Boilers and models.

His boilers and accessories became well known and were sold in the Argyll Arcade in Glasgow in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s. 
As a young man he and a friend designed and built a racing car, when they turned up at the start line they were immediately disqualified because they had built a single seater, but this race required a passenger. Peter immediately jumped astride the cigar shaped racer and hung onto the shoulders of his friend the driver.  Unknown to him the exhaust gasses would play on his leg and severely burn his knee, he walked with a limp ever after that, eventually using a walking stick.