Boxwood with ivory mounts, by Henry Hastrick, English, 1835 - 1854.

'Two boxwood pipes of which the right hand is the longer, held in a wide head joint provided with three shut-off keyes. The ivory mouthpiece is missing. The pipes are ivory mounted and the keys are of brass, octagonally shaped. The holes are marked as in 21/5, save that the left hand pipe has a seventh hole marked C#. [Those of 21/5 (Museum no. W.23-1925) are marked as follows: 'The holes in the left pipe are marked from the highest B,A,G,F,E,D ... The right pipe holes are marked G,F,E,D ...']. The keys on this pipe (left) are marked E flat (high up) and F natural (lower down the pipe). Those of the right-hand pipe are marked C, B and (low down) Low C key. The bass pipe, connected to the back of the head by a short tube, uses a boxwood cylinder 31 cm long and slightly tapered, with its widest bore, 24.5 mm, at the top end. At 14 cm from the top it is closed by a cork. The bottom end carries a boxwood bed, 14 cm long, for resting the instrument on the chair. The four keys on this pipe are marked D key, C key, B key and A key , and a short protruding tube is marked F natural.'
- Anthony Baines: Catalogue of Musical Instruments in the Victoria and Albert Museum - Part II: Non-keyboard instruments (London, 1998), p. 90.

This instrument was bought for £1 - 10 - 00 (£1.50) by the Museum in 1882. It had been part of the collections of Carl Engel (1818-1882), an eminent musicologist from Hanover, who published the Descriptive Catalogue of the Musical Instruments in the South Kensington Museum in 1874. The South Kensington Museum was renamed the Victoria & Albert Museum in 1899.

In about 1820 William Bainbridge of London (d. 1831) had developed the triple flageolet, a wind instrument with a whistle-like mouthpiece and an extra pipe in the bass. As the instrument had more than one pipe, the player could produce chords. Henry Hastrick took over Bainbridge's business from his widow in 1835, and it continued till a year after his death in 1854. By then the fashion for these instruments was waning: professionals preferred the flute and amateurs found double and triple flageolets too complicacted to play.

295-1882