Pfeil were a firm established in the 19th century and based at 145, 147 and 149 St. John Street, Clerkenwell, London with an associated company, Pfeil, Stedall & Son in Broad Street, Bloomsbury. By the end of the 1800s they had grown to become a major supplier of home-produced and imported engineering equipment (with a large, beautifully-produced, hard-back catalog) and also agents for several English and foreign machine-tool makers. They also "bought in" a range of shapers, small planers, drills and simple, plain-turning lathes which they marketed under their own name - of which the examples shown on this page are typical of the type - and sold between approximately 1880 and 1910.
The small Pfiel lathes supplied for bench mounting were available in at least two forms: one with a 3-inch centre height and 22 inches between centres, the other with a 3.5" centre height and 27 inches between centres.  Both were built along identical lines and were priced, in 1901, at £4 : 15 : 0d for the smaller model and £5 : 10 : 0 for the larger; however, the compound slide rest was extra and added a substantial £3 : 17 : 6 to the price of the 3-inch lathe and £4 : 4 : 0 to the 3.5-inch, so nearly doubling the cost. The solid headstock spindle (a charge of £1: 12 : 6 was made for one bored through) with a nose threaded 3/4" x 10 tpi and a backing register of 3/32" x 3/4", ran in a single bearing - a hard-steel, conical bush (although later models may have had phosphor-bronze bearings) - whilst the other end was supported against a hardened-steel adjuster screw which passed (in traditional early-lathe style) through the left-hand headstock upright. The drive pulley was a 4-step example of the type usually driven by a round leather belt (a "gut" drive) from the stand-mounted flywheel, although one of the lathes below appears to have been fitted with a single modern V-belt pulley as well; the front face of the headstock, like that on so many small lathes of the era, was machined flat. The stand legs were 361/2" high to the bed surface, and the flywheel 20" in diameter with belt grooves of 19",  18" and 10" diameters.
The bed of the 3.5-inch bench lathe was flat on top and 3.14" wide - with shears roughly the same width front and back of 1.014" and 1.04" respectively. 
The swivelling top-slide was typical of its type with ungraduated feed screws and a simple "clog-heel" toolpost - which carried the inscription "PFIEL & CO LONDON"; the heads of the two tool-clamping bolts were of an unusual pattern.
The "Plain Foot Lathes", as Pfeil called their stand-mounted machines, were available in centres heights from 3 to 6 inches with the smallest (3-inch) machine having (like it's bench-mounted companion) flat bed ways but with the other models available with a V and a Flat - or, to special order, with double flats.
If you have a Pfiel machine tool of any description  the writer would be interested to hear from you.
More Pfiel photographs here