In the late 1840s, Henry Whittles was a spring knife manufacturer in Bath Street.   By 1851, he partnered John Froggatt in West Street.  Whittles & Froggatt exhibited surgical instruments and pen knives at the Great Exhibition (1851).  By 1854, Whittles & Froggatt was making fancy pen knives and surgical instruments in Broom Spring Lane.  However, Henry Whittles died on 24 January 1857, aged 51, and was buried in the General Cemetery.  By 1860, William Whittles & Sons had been organised in Holly Street.  Not all the Whittles family can be identified, but several of the family lived and often worked in Thomas Street.  By 1868, the enterprise was re-styled as ‘Mary Whittles & Sons’, surgical instrument and pocket knife maker, Broomhall Street.   Mary Ann Whittles, living in Thomas Street, was likely Henry’s widow; other partners included Henry and John, also in Thomas Street.   Mary Ann died on 17 May 1869, aged 65, and was buried with her husband in the General Cemetery.  Other Whittles’ burials were: Edward Whittles (50), ‘cutler’ in Pond Street, died 23 July 1859; William Whittles (45), ‘cutler’ in Thomas Street, died 12 February 1876; John Whittles (48), ‘surgical instrument maker’, Thomas Street, died 11 March 1886; and John Whittles (35), ‘cutler’, Thomas Street, died 6 January 1897.  

The business was no longer listed during the 1870s, but in the 1890s William Whittles and Mrs Jane Whittles became active as surgical instrument makers in Thomas Street.  After another hiatus, in 1901 Henry Whittles Jun. was operating as a surgical instrument maker in Pearl Street.   By 1907, W. Whittles & Co (under William Henry Whittles, Milton Street) was listed as a surgical instrument maker in Fitzwilliam Lane.  It apparently ceased trading by 1913.   Unwin and Hawley (2003)¹ illustrate a fine nineteenth-century set of folding surgical and veterinary pocket knives made by this company.

^1. Unwin, J, and Hawley, K, A Cut Above the Rest (Sheffield, 2003)