Almost certainly dating from the period 1870 to 1895, the very rare (just three are known) A. Halls backgeared and screwcutting lathe was manufactured in Yarmouth, England. With a design typical of its period - and the sort of machine turned out by many of the more ambitious small engineering concerns at the time - it had a lightly constructed headstock with the end thrust of the (solid) spindle taken against a cross-bar mounted on posts outboard of the left-hand bearing. The spindle may well have been hardened and ran in a cone socket, directly in the cast-iron of the headstock - the free graphite in which ensured a long, trouble-free life. A 3-step pulley was provided, for drive by a round leather "gut" rope originally from a foot-treadle and flywheel assembly - a system that would have provided sufficient motive force for most small jobs and, in backgear, the capacity for some heavier work.
With a flat top and V-edges the bed was of the traditional "English" type with a rather short permanent gap provided at the headstock end. Cast as one with the apron, the saddle incorporated a useful T-slotted boring table (with two transverse T-slots) to which was bolted a compound slide rest free to be positioned as the operator wished. Driven by crank handles, the slide's coarse-pitch feed screws were of the correct left-hand pitch and so avoided that problem common to so many contemporary small lathes of "cack-handed" operation where turning the screw to the right retracted rather than advanced the slide. As was common at the time, the gear on the crank-handled carriage feed was connected directly to the rack, making a fractional rotation produce a disproportionately long and difficult-to-control travel along the bed.
Drive to the 4 t.p.i. leadscrew was though through a tumble-reverse mechanism and coarse-pitch changewheels, of which the usual large set was provided.
If you have a Halls lathe the writer would be very surprised - and delighted if you would make contact.