Joshua Kirkham was born in Sheffield in about 1844, the son of David Kirkham (c.1820-1851) and his wife Sarah née Mottram (c.1812-1854).  They lived in the Park, where David was a shoe manufacturer.  After his father’s early death, Joshua’s mother sold boots and shoes, while Joshua was apprenticed as a horn cutter to Henry Mettam, who was his uncle (see Roberts & Mettam).  Kirkham was listed in directories from the late 1870s, when he was variously described as a stag handle and scale cutter, merchant, and tortoiseshell dealer in Trafalgar Street/Rockingham Street.  Kirkham operated in a small way: in the Census (1881), he is recorded as employing one boy.  However, he apparently prospered and by the 1890s had moved to Roslyn Mount, Whitworth Road, Ranmoor.  In 1872, he had married Eliza Ann (daughter of Joseph Barnes, Broomhill) at Nether Chapel, Norfolk Street.  Kirkham was a Congregationalist (serving as president of Sheffield Congregational Association), supported the temperance movement, and was active in local politics as a Liberal.  After 1905, he retired from business.  He died in Whitworth Road on 9 January 1912, aged 68, and was buried in an unconsecrated grave in the General Cemetery.  He left £7,551.  His widow, Eliza, was buried in the same grave in 1913 (aged 66).