By the summer of 1913 several thousands of rifles had been brought into Ulster; but in May of that year the mishap occurred to which Lord Roberts referred in his letter to Colonel Hickman on the 4th of June, when he wrote: "I am sorry to read about the capture of rifles."[85] Crawford had been obliged to find some place in London for storing the arms which he was procuring from his friends in Hamburg, and with the help of Sir William Bull, M.P. for Hammersmith, the yard of an old-fashioned inn in that district was found where it was believed they would be safe until means of transporting them to the North of Ireland could be devised. The inn was taken by a firm calling itself John Ferguson & Co., the active member of which was Sir William Bull's brother-in-law, Captain Budden; and the business appeared to consist of dealing in second-hand scientific instruments and machinery, curiosities, antique armour and weapons, old furniture, and so forth, which were brought in very heavy cases and deposited in the yard. For a time it proved useful, and the Maxims from Woolwich passed safely through the Hammersmith store. But the London police got wind of the Hammersmith Armoury, and seized a consignment of between six and seven thousand excellent Italian rifles. A rusty and little-known Act of Parliament had to be dug up to provide legal authority for the seizure. Many sportsmen and others then learnt for the first time that, under the Gun-barrel Proof Act, 1868, every gun-barrel in England must bear the Gun-makers' Company's proof-mark showing that its strength has been tested and approved. As the penalty for being in possession of guns not so marked was a fine of £2 per barrel, to have put in a claim for the Italian rifles seized at Hammersmith would have involved a payment of more than £12,000, and would have given the Government information as to the channel through which they had been imported. No move was made, therefore, so far as the firearms were concerned, but the bayonets attached to them, for the seizure of which there was no legal justification, were claimed by Crawford's agent in Hamburg, and eventually reached Ulster safely by another route. About the same time a consignment of half a million rounds of small-arm ammunition, which was discovered by the authorities through faulty packing in cement-bags, was also confiscated in another part of the country.