Harry James Lansdowne Allen (1873-1933) was born at Bilston, Staffordshire, on 2 February 1873.  He was the son of Henry Benjamin Edwards Allen, a shoe dealer and later traveller, and his wife, Caroline Amelia née Baker (who was from the Wolverhampton Boot and Shoe manufacturing family of James Baker & Sons).  As a teenager, Harry James was apprenticed as a printer.  But in 1897, he launched Allen, Price & Co at Bilston, which dealt in household goods, including cutlery.  By 1899, the partnership (with Norman Edgar Price) was bankrupt and the stock was auctioned (Walsall Advertiser, 25 November 1899).  At a bankruptcy hearing at Wolverhampton, it was stated that Allen and Price had operated in a singular fashion: they concocted advertisements, which offered mail-order goods (such as fancy silverware) using a fictitious name (usually ‘M. Webb’).  Customers complained that goods were not as described or greatly overpriced (Birmingham Daily Post, 27 September 1900).  

In 1901, Harry James moved to Sheffield to lodgings at Oak Hill Road.  According to the Census, he was a manager at an electro-plate works.  This was a less grand job than it sounded.  The ‘works’ was no more than a gloomy room (rented by Allen at 5 shillings a week) at 28 Cambridge Street, Backfields.  Allen hung a sign, ‘F. E. Elkington, Gothic Works’, above the door.  That name duly appeared as a silversmith in the Sheffield directory in 1901.  Allen ‘bought in’ cutlery and silverware from an established maker and had them stamped ‘F. E. Elkington S.A1’.  These goods were advertised around the country, but pointedly not in Sheffield or Birmingham.  This blatant attempt to trade off the name of the country’s leading electro-plate manufacturer, Elkington’s at Birmingham, inevitably resulted in a legal action.  The ‘5s office’ was raided, revealing only a pile of trade directories and brown paper parcels, and Allen was hauled before the courts.  F. E. Elkington was not entirely a straw man (his name was Frank Ernest and he was a bicycle dealer from Bilston), but Allen’s intention was obvious.  The two men were fined five guineas each (Sheffield Independent, 17 May 1901).  Bankruptcy soon followed.

In about 1906, Harry James Allen launched James Allen & Co as a cutlery manufacturer at 92 Arundel Street.  In 1910, he was again brought before local magistrates.  This was to answer charges that he had applied a false description to ‘through-tang knives’ (in which the tang passed the length of the table knife handle and was secured at the end by a riveted head).   Allen’s cheaper version had only a small tack at the end and a short tang.  A. J. Hobson – whose firm manufactured and advertised the original article (Thomas Turner & Co,) – gave evidence.  Allen was fined 40s (£2) and forced to withdraw the knives (Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 29 June 1910).  

James Allen & Co remained at Arundel Street until after the War.  In the early 1920s, the firm moved to Nella Works, Forge Lane (Hereford Street) with Harry James Allen as the sole owner.   Nella Works (‘Allen’ reversed) was a finisher of cutlery, rather than a manufacturer, and made extensive use of outworkers.  These numbered between thirty and forty in the early 1920s.   Their tasks included buffing cutlery (such as electro-plate fish eaters) and spoon and fork filing.   The cheaper varieties of stainless table knives were marketed, usually with xylonite handles, and marked ‘RUST-PROOF CUTLERY’ and ‘FIRTH STAINLESS’.   Harry James Lansdowne Allen, of Nether Edge Road, died on 20 August 1933 at South Yorkshire Mental Hospital.  He was aged 60 and left £261.  He was buried at Abbey Lane Cemetery.  

In the 1930s, James Allen & Co’s address changed to Victoria Works, Victoria Street.  This was the address of John Derby & Sons and its seems likely that the latter bought Allen’s assets.  In 1950, an advertisement for James Allen & Co (electro-plate and cutlery manufacturer) appeared in The Ironmonger Diary.  It claimed an establishment date of 1800.  Re-plating old silverware was a speciality.  By the 1960s, Allen’s Victoria Works was at Milton Street; by 1972, the address was Beehive Works, Milton Street (Gregory Fenton).  The Allen name apparently became defunct in the early 1970s.

Entry updated October 2020, with information kindly provided by Tony Allen, grandson of Harry James Lansdowne Allen.