The conversation that spawned this data collection is ongoing, and can be found here in this thread.

Gillette's earliest British factory was in Leicester, England, and began its operations early in 1909. As best as we can currently tell it seems that it probably ceased its operations sometime between 1914 and 1915, and Gillette had apparently vacated the facility by 1916. During this time it appears that the company used several different serial number prefixes. It seems unlikely that the plant's production during these years would have been high enough to warrant these having been used in series, like the American plant's use of A, B, C, etc. Rather, it appears that these series were probably being run in parallel. One possible explanation is that the prefix was used to designate the market that the razor was destined for (E for England, F for France, G for Germany, etc.). Another is that Gillette may have had different production lines that each used their own prefix to track their production. A third speculates that E stands for razors made in England, F for made in France and H for made in Germany. Hopefully, as we gather more examples, we'll be able to come to a more definitive conclusion.

In the table below, the "Patent Stamp Type" value of 1 refers to Brit.Pat.No.28763 of 02

The box in which the razor was found is of lesser significance due to the prevalence of miss-matches. Given that qualification, the “Remarks” column contains the following abbreviations:

NOB - Not Original Box
SL - Gillette Logo in Bold Script printed on the cloth in the box lid.
SIDL - Diamond Logo with “Known the World Over” sewn into the cloth in the box lid.
DL - Diamond Logo with “Known the World Over” printed on the cloth in the box lid.
BPB - Leather covered box with British Patent Statement on base.
MB - Metal Box
CBB - Cardboard Blade Box(es)
MBB - Metal Blade Box(es)

Important note: Please do not link to external pages that may be transient as references for the examples entered in this table, and under no circumstances should eBay auction links be used as references. We've already lost a number of these examples because they are no longer available at the original location. If the reference isn't already in a B&B thread please add a post with photos to our main discussion thread on this subject, or if you're not sure how to do that post a request for assistance there and one of us will be happy to help you.