Scan 58
The Fiddle Fancier's Guide: A Manual of Information Regarding Violins …, 1892
2 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1Betts, John, London. He was born at Stamford Lincolnshire, in 1755, and died in 1823. This maker and dealer has become famous chiefly through two things, the first being his copy of the King Andreas Amati 'Cello before referred to. This copy is certainly a fine production, which, besides showing paint in what was apparently the primitive abundance, also shows the wood, a very great advantage over the original, which is rather ancient now, and dingy-looking. The second circumstance was that singularly fortunate, and most exceptionally lucky windfall—as it might be named—in his direction of the now famous "Betts Strad," one of the handsomest of Stradivari violins. Nothing definite appears to be known about the date of this transaction, but it occurred probably between seventy and eighty years ago. Some person sold a violin over the counter to one of the Messrs. Betts, in their shop at the Royal Exchange—No. 2—one of the shops, probably, which at present face the front of the Bank of England. The price asked, or agreed upon, for the instrument was twenty shillings, the person selling it, not having, of course, the slightest idea of its value. Mr. Betts, however, knew what it was, and bought it, keeping it beside him for years, and declining very handsome offers of as much as five hundred guineas for it. The story is a striking one, but it is not without its parallel, even in recent times. John and Arthur Betts are said to have made a copy of this Stradivari. These were descendants of the original John, who does not seem to have been a prolific violin maker. This copy has very handsome wood in the back, as it ought to have, in order to match
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