Samuel Hancock & Sons
This firm had one of the most striking of nineteenth-century trade marks – ‘MAZEPPA. This was a reference to Ivan Mazeppa, a historical Cossack figure in Ukraine, who had been bound naked to a horse’s back as a punishment for adultery. Advertisements stated that the mark was first used in 1787. The business was started by Samuel Hancock (c.1795-1854), who in the 1841 census was a cutlery manufacturer in Pea Croft. In the 1820s and 1830s, he had combined pen knife an....
