This branch of the Bowler family came from Heeley.  William Bowler was a horn presser, first in Upper Heeley, and then by 1861 in Charles Street.  He employed five men and a boy.  His wife was named Ann.  Their second son was Joseph Bowler (1841-1904), who married Mary Dewsnap (1844-1893), the only daughter of John Dewsnap, a cutlery materials manufacturer (see Dewsnap Bros).   John Dewsnap Bowler, the son of Joseph and Mary, was born in 1868.   

Joseph Bowler became a brass founder and scale/spring maker.  By the late nineteenth century, he was based in Portobello Street.  By 1901, however, he described himself as an ironmonger in Portobello Street, with his son John Dewsnap Bowler as the manager.  They lived at the same address in Byron Road.   Joseph Bowler, ‘cutlery manufacturer’, died in School Road on 15 September 1904, aged 63.  He was buried in the General Cemetery.  His son continued the business, but after the First World War traded as J. Dewsnap Bowler, cutlery materials manufacturer, Portobello Street.   He also owned John Copley & Sons.  John D. Bowler, Saltergate, Bamford, died at Oakview Nursing Home, Sheffield, on 19 February 1925, aged 56.  He left £4,029 to his widow Annie Elizabeth and their son Colin D. Bowler.   They offered the firm (and Copley’s) for sale as a going concern in 1932 (Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 23 July 1932).  It continued to operate in Portobello Street and Eyre Street.   By 1939, it was a limited company, based in Trippet Lane.

In 1964, W. D. Slater (see Slater Bros) and Jack Taylor bought J. Dewsnap Bowler.  Taylor recalled that when he first went into the factory, ‘pen and pocket knife blades were made by drop stamping from a mood of steel into its wedge shape cross-section.  Later we cut the blades out to their correct shape, hardened and tempered them and then put them into a pair of German-made grinding machines, which ground each side in turn.  This made the assembly of knives much easier’ (J. Taylor, letter to author, 8 November 1995).  In 1972, Slater and Taylor bought Joseph Elliot & Sons and the operations of both firms were concentrated at Sylvester Works.