Colin Littlewood Roberts was born in Sheffield in 1871.  His family lived in Attercliffe: his father was Augustus Morton Roberts, a general practitioner in medicine and surgery, and his mother was named Sophia.  By 1891, Colin L. Roberts was a foreign correspondent for a merchant.  He partnered Herbert Manico in Roberts & Manico (see E. C Manico), a cutlery merchant, but this was dissolved in 1894.  Roberts next established his own business as C. L. Roberts & Co, Eyre Street, which sold similar products to his previous venture.  In an advertisement that Roberts placed in The Foreign Buyers’ Catalogue (1895), some of the pocket cutlery was marked ‘Roberts & Manico’.  Roberts also continued to use his old marks:  ‘EDWARD BARBER’, and ‘R&M’, inscribed on a pen nib. 

Roberts’ cutlery venture apparently became defunct before 1900 and he turned his attention elsewhere.  By 1911, he was a dry salter, living at Didsbury, Manchester.  He later became a tea dealer in Ashton-under-Lyne; and established Knight & Roberts, Liverpool, which was bankrupt by 1922.   In 1937, he was living at Southport.  He died on 10 February 1938, aged 66, and was buried at Southern Cemetery, Chorlton, Manchester.