18cm (7in) x 43cm (17in) x 29cm (11in)
Gilt tooled dark green leather over wood. The hinged lid gilt embossed with the owner’s name GVR cypher and inset gilt swing handle. Maker’s mark of John Peck & Co of Blackfriars. Complete with working lock and key.
Joseph Paton Maclay, 1st Baron Maclay, PC (1857-1951) was a Glasgow shipping magnate admitted to the Privy Council and appointed Minister of Shipping in 1916 until 1921. Maclay rejected Admiral Jellicoe’s arguments that convoys presented too large a target to U-boats, and that merchant ship masters lacked the discipline to ‘keep station’ in a convoy (from personal experience, he knew the latter to be false). Maclay was created a baronet, of Park Terrace in the City of Glasgow in the County of Lanark, in 1914 and in 1922 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Maclay, of Glasgow in the County of Lanark. Maclay was a devout Sabbatarian, who would not even read newspapers on a Sunday, and whose only publication was a book of prayers for family use.
