Thank you Richard: observations well noted.
Musket barrels being reduced in length used to be a rather common exercise. In Portugal, for one, during troubled periods (Peninsular and thereabouts) people mainly in rural places had local smiths to assemble parts of muskets left back by either side armies and build hand made blunderbusses. For statistically reasons, most setups were made with British parts, namely locks and shortened barrels. The basic reason for the barrel shortening was, more than the need to used them in confined places, like from inside carriages, the practice to go out at night and hide them under one's coat, for eventual defence against assailants. Other cases like this one posted, i guess, would be to shorten the barrel from an integral musket, for the same purpose.
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