Other
Royal Manchester College Of Music (RMCM)
1880

This is catalogued as "a contraption" which is museum-speak for "not a clue". We think it was made in English, and we think it is late 19th century. It seems to be a kind of double-violin, consisting of a violin body and a viola body cobbled together with wooden bars.
But it seems that the two bodies of the instruments and their respective fingerboards, never completed, have been mounted incomprehensibly (?incorrectly assembled) so that it is quite unworkable. Dismissed by M. Bennett as 'a contraption a document of hare-brained eccentricity and poor workmanship'; its rationale thus remains obscure.
It came to the RNCM museum via its predecessor institution, the Royal Manchester College of Music.