In 1921, Peace, Sons & Varley Ltd was registered with £5,000 capital at Don Bridge Works, 126 Corporation Street.  According to a brief prospectus, it was formed to take over the business carried on by Eric Ralph Varley as Frank Peace & Sons, an electro-plate manufacturer, silversmith, cutler, goldsmith, gun merchant, watch and clock maker and importer.  The subscribers were E. R. Varley, traveller of Grove Road, Millhouses; and G. H. Hall, a solicitor’s  articled clerk in Wolverhampton (Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 17 August 1921).  No mention was made of ‘Frank Peace’.   However, Eric Ralph Varley (1899-1963) was the son of Jesse Varley (1869-1929).  The latter had been born at St Helens and became an accountant at Wolverhampton.  In 1917, he had been jailed for five years for stealing over £72,000.

Peace, Sons & Varley Ltd, which had little machinery and no power, was no more than a front for Jesse Varley.  By 1923, it had liabilities over £5,000 and was wound up.  Varley immediately registered Peace, Sons & Varley (1923) Ltd, with £15,000 capital.  This was another bogus operation, which Varley used as a means to raise money under various false pretences.  In the subsequent court case, Varley’s defence was that he had been ‘working like a dog for the last three years.  Half his troubles were caused by the tittle tattle about his past unfortunate affair for which he made the fullest possible reparation’.  Since then, he ‘had been going perfectly straight’ (Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 1 March 1924).  The court sentenced him to three years penal servitude and six months’ hard labour, the sentences to run concurrently.  Chapman, Wall & Co was the next occupant at Don Bridge Works.