Just three lathes by Richard Lloyd have come to light in recent years with one, discovered in Australia, a simple little hand-controlled carrying cast-in lettering along the front face of the bed proclaiming R.Lloyd & Co Birmingham. Another, by way of contrast, a large and strongly-built flat-belt-driven conventional screwcutting lathe looking to date from the 1930s and fitted with a screwed-on badge. The final example - it came to light in 2023 - is a quite ordinary backgeared and screwcutting type with a centre height of around 6 inches and built circa 1900 to 1920.
Richard Lloyd was born in Birmingham in 1772, one of sixteen children born to the Quaker, Sampson Lloyd, the founder of Lloyd's Bank. His first venture into trade, after an apprentice in one of the family companies, was to open, in 1803,  an ironmongers based at 135, Steel-House Lane, Birmingham. In later years the company, having expanded considerably, was to occupy the "Galton" Works in Steelhouse Lane, Birmingham - the trade name "Galtona" being used on machine-tool drive belts, small tools and has also been found on several otherwise "unknown" machine tools including the "Turner" capstan lathe - a machine with a headstock identical to that used on the R.Lloyd.
By 1869 the company was very well established as a supplier of all types of engineering accessories and equipment and, by 1884 were advertising as makers of machine tools, lathe changewheels and other engineering equipment. It appears that, like many smaller concerns, R.Lloyd were happy to build machines to a customer's or dealer's order and incorporate whatever name was needed on the castings. Hence, identical headstocks labelled "Galtona" and "Turner" have been found together with other machines where the word "Galtona" has been crudely chiselled off (though with sufficient left to decode the deception) and even dealers' catalogues where the printing blocks where the maker's name has been erased and the machine described using some generic term in parenthesis.
The conclusion - tR.Lloyd lathes are rare and, so far, the three shown below are the only ones known to retain the name of the maker - or, perhaps in the case of the larger example, the dealer..