George Berley (c. 1790-1869) was one of several spring and Bowie knife makers who flourished as the American trade reached its peak.  His early career is obscure and his name was sometimes spelled ‘Birley’ in directories.  George Birley was listed in 1817 as a pen and pocket knife cutler in Heeley.  He may have been the junior partner in Hasland & Birley, cutlers, Upper Heeley.   (The senior partner was John Hasland, who died on 21 May 1840, ‘a kind and indulgent landlord’, who had lived with his wife in the same house for over 50 years.)  In the 1851 Census, George Berley was recorded as a cutler and farmer of 19 acres, living in Upper Heeley, and employing a labourer and two master cutlers.  He first appeared in a Sheffield directory of 1854 as a maker of spring knives and Bowies and as a general dealer in cutlery, Burgess Street.   

George Berley, however, was bankrupt by December 1859.  By 1861, when he was aged 70 – and when the Bowie trade had reached its peak – he had retired.  He is known to have used the trade mark ‘ELREB’ (apparently registered in 1789) on his Barlow knives.   George Berley Jun. was listed as a spring knife manufacturer in Heeley in the early 1860s (he had employed three men in 1851).  He was buried on 13 September 1868, aged 41.  George Berley Sen. died on 5 July 1869, aged 79, leaving under £300.  Both burials were in Christ Church graveyard, Heeley.   These men are long forgotten, but the Berley name survives on Bowie knives in American collections.