This table knife cutler operated from Livingstone Works, 50 Holly Street. In newspapers and directories, Allen appeared between about 1899 and the late 1920s. Livingstone Works was a tenement-style collection of workshops, which had previously been occupied by cutlery manufacturer, Henry V. Stacey. No Allen residential address was provided in directories alongside the trading name, but information from other sources identifies the owner as Joe Allen (1863-1930). He was the son of John Allen (a pocket-knife grinder) and his wife, Ann. Joe became a table knife cutler and hafter (handle maker). 

By 1901, the Allen family lived at Pearl Street, off Cemetery Road. In the following year, Allen was charged with being drunk at the Three Merry Smiths, Holly Street (the landlord of the pub also appeared in court for allowing drunkenness on his premises). Three police constables stated that they had seen Allen drunk; but he called eight witnesses to testify that he was sober. The case was dismissed (Sheffield Independent, 14 May 1902).

Allen’s occasional ‘wanted’ advertisements for workers – mostly boys and young girls – suggest that his workshop at Holly Street specialised in hafting round tang table knives (in other words, attaching knife handles).  Interestingly, between about 1900 and 1905 Allen listed himself in directories as Joseph – perhaps an attempt to trade off the name of the better-known Joseph Allen & Sons. By the end of that decade, though, Joe Allen was the listed name. 

By 1911, the Allen family lived at Bennett Street. Joe’s son, Albert Victor, was also a table knife hafter, and presumably worked at Holly Street. Joe’s bachelor brothers, Henry and Walter (who lived at the same address in Bennett Street), were pen blade finishers and grinders.  In July 1916, Walter was hit by a motor cycle and sidecar outside Millhouses Station. Brother Joe appealed for witnesses, who had seen an ‘old man knocked down’, to contact him at Holly Street. Walter later died from his injuries (Sheffield Evening Telegraph, 13 September 1916).

In the 1920s, Joe Allen continued to be listed in the trades section of directories as a table knife manufacturer at Holly Street; and in the street section as a journeyman cutler residing at 46 Bennett Street.  He died on 21 April 1930, aged 66, at the Royal Infirmary. He was buried at the General Cemetery.