According to an advertisement, Ibbotson Bros was established in 1809.  The family came from Hathersage in Derbyshire – a village known for its pins and needles and its Methodism (see G. H. Lawrence, John Stead).  The Ibbotson genealogy is complex.  A pedigree has been constructed, but it is incomplete (Hall, 1915¹).  The early Ibbotsons were farmers and landowners at Carr Head, Hathersage.  One of them – William Ibbotson (c.1766-1818) – moved to Sheffield and became a partner in Eyre, Ibbotson & Henzell.  This was listed in Green Lane after 1814 as a factor and fender and edge tool manufacturer.  William’s partners – besides Edward Eyre and Isaac Henzell – included his son Henry Ibbotson (1797-1849).  William died on 1 December 1818, aged 52, and was buried in Hathersage churchyard.  William also had a daughter, Mary (1794-1867), who in 1813 had married her cousin, William Ibbotson (1789-1852).  The latter was the son of Samuel (1753-1816), who was a brother of the father of William of Carr Head.  This family link has been explained as follows:

On the opposite side of Broad Lane, in the first house above St Thomas’s Street, lived Mr [William] Ibbotson, the late father of Mr Henry Ibbotson, and uncle to the late Mr William Ibbotson, who married his cousin Miss Mary, the daughter.  Mr William was consequently brother-in-law as well as cousin to Mr Henry; and they took to the old gentleman’s business, which I believe was the saw trade, and entered into partnership as ‘Messrs Ibbotson Brothers’ (Sheffield Independent, 18 October 1872; Leader, 1876²). 

After the end of Eyre, Ibbotson & Henzell in 1819, Ibbotsons & Roebuck (the forerunner of Ibbotson Bros) was listed in 1821 as a merchant and manufacturer of saws, stove grates, fenders, scythes, and steel at Barber & Genn’s former factory at Bower Spring, near Kelham Island.  The partners were the ‘brothers’ William and Henry Ibbotson and Jonathan Roebuck (1789-1848).

Complicating this picture further is William & George Ibbotson & Co, which made a similar range of products and had forging capacity at Wisewood Forge.  It was listed in Bridge Street between 1797 and the late 1820s.  This firm was probably run by the descendants of a related William Ibbotson (1738-1825?) from Hathersage.  George Ibbotson, of Coulston Croft, who died 'rather suddenly' on 5 January 1830, aged 52, was apparently the other partner and William’s son.  George was buried in St Paul’s churchyard; possibly his father was, too, in 1825.  After 1830, the Bridge Street business likely passed to William Ibbotson Horn (see J. & R. Dodge), who was the son of Mary (the daughter of the William Ibbotson, born in 1738).

In the 1820s, Ibbotsons & Roebuck began feeding America’s almost insatiable demand for crucible steel, saws, files, edge tools, and knives.  The trade and profits were so good that in 1825 – when much of the district was still fields and gardens – the Ibbotsons and Roebuck built Globe Works.  In 1827, Roebuck left to start his own business and William and Henry continued as Ibbotson Bros.  In the Sheffield directory (1828), both Wm. & Geo. Ibbotson & Co and Ibbotson Bros were listed.  The latter’s trade mark was ‘GLOBE’ (word and picture).

With its classical stone facades and arched windows, even today Globe Works strikes an incongruous note of grandeur amongst the grimy factories in the district.  Globe Works was not only a factory, but also a home, with a stylish entrance and well-appointed residence for the owners.  Like Sheaf Works of William Greaves & Sons, the factory was an integrated steel and tool making complex (though it also had tilting and rolling capacity at Middlewood).  Surviving plans show that in the 1830s Globe Works had a wide range of facilities for making saws, files, fenders, and edge tools (such as scythes).  It had workshops for joiners’ tools and for preparing the horn handles used in cutlery manufacture.  It also had a cast steel furnace and a pot shed for the clay crucibles used in melting.  Several of these workshops survive.  A walk through the arched entrance of Globe Works shows that behind the classical façade the Ibbotsons had a factory layout similar to smaller Sheffield firms – modest multi-storey brick buildings, with rows of small windows.

Much of the Ibbotsons’ output was destined for America.  William and Henry had been quick to recognise the potential of this market and both visited the country.  Eventually, Henry moved to New York to market the firm’s ‘celebrated cast steel’, saws, and cutlery (which included Bowie knives).  The firm had an office in Pearl Street in the hardware district in Manhattan.  In 1833, Henry married Anne Frances Darling of New York and soon became part of the city’s prosperous elite, who according to a family historian was a ‘friend and intimate of many distinguished men of his day’ (Forbes, 1955³).  He supported the anti-slavery movement and in 1835 entertained the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison at his home in Brooklyn.  Garrison praised Ibbotson for his ‘moral excellence’.  Henry settled in the USA and in 1837 the partnership with William was dissolved.  Besides investing in real estate, Henry launched wire making in New York City; screw manufacture in Poughkeepsie; and cutlery production in Peekskill, New York.  He died from cholera in New York on 27 August 1849, aged 52.

His elder ‘brother’, William, directed operations in Sheffield.  He and his wife, Mary, and their large family lived in the residential part of Globe Works until the 1840s. William was a prominent industrialist in the town.  He never held any public office, but was active in local and national politics.  His standpoint on the issues of the day was complex.  As a Methodist, he favoured temperance and a sober and industrious (non-unionised) workforce.  On the other hand, he lent his weight to Liberal causes, such as the passing of the Reform Bill (1832) for the extension of the voting franchise (though he was not in favour of universal suffrage, which he described as a ‘universal curse’).  To achieve his Liberal aims, he supported the campaign of his friend James Silk Buckingham (1786-1855), which resulted in the latter’s election as Sheffield’s representative in Parliament.  Ibbotson was a vociferous free-trader and member of the national Anti-Corn Law League and the Sheffield Anti-Corn Law Society, which opposed import duties on grain.  Ibbotson argued that the Corn Laws damaged trade and raised workers’ living costs (thereby, of course, increasing the pressure on Ibbotson to pay higher wages).

William Ibbotson has been praised for ‘a liberality of spirit which enabled him to view the claims of the workers with understanding and sympathy’ (Lloyd, 1913⁴).  But his relationship with the trade unions – he had once described them as ‘evil’ – was predictably antagonistic.  Matters came to a head in 1843, after Ibbotson had fired a group of workers for their ‘loose habits’ (Sheffield Independent, 7 October 1843).  In retaliation, the trade unions planted a canister of gunpowder at Globe Works.  The explosion at night – which destroyed a warehouse and deafened the neighbourhood – was designed to intimidate, rather than murder.  But it revealed the class divisions in the Sheffield tool trades.  These divisions were well aired in the correspondence columns of The Sheffield Independent in the weeks after the ‘outrage’, when Ibbotson defended his labour policies against the challenges of his critics.  Ibbotson was damned in Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845) as a manufacturer ‘who had made himself obnoxious by an active participation in bourgeoisie movements, by low wages, the exclusive employment of knobsticks [non-union labour], and the exploitation of the Poor Law for his own benefit’.

Underlying these tensions (which invariably arose over the issue of wages) was the state of Sheffield’s steel and tool trade.  Exporting to the USA was already becoming tougher, because of increasing competition from the growing number of American tool manufacturers.  In 1839, Ibbotson warned a meeting at Cutlers’ Hall: ‘Our manufactures are fast leaving us’ (Sheffield Independent, 12 January 1839).  Only six years later, Ibbotson was bankrupt, and his stock and machinery auctioned (Sheffield Independent, 12 April 1845).  Why Ibbotson Bros became bankrupt is a matter for conjecture.  Perhaps the firm had overreached itself or had problems with unpaid bills in America.  Certainly, Globe Works became a millstone once the American trade in cutlery and tools began to subside.  Experience would prove that it was always too big for any single manufacturer.  The core business in steel and tools, however, remained viable.  The Ibbotsons resumed trading and began paying off their debts, while rationalising the business.  In 1849, Ibbotson’s announced that it was relinquishing table knife manufacture and sold its tools and stock, alongside several thousand dozen table knife blades and 3,000 dozen forks (Sheffield Independent, 28 July 1849).

Apparently, the firm did not entirely withdraw from table cutlery immediately.  William Rufus Nutt (see Glossop & Nutt) was manager of the table knife department in 1852 (before he was jailed).  In 1851, the company had been able to mount a successful display at the Great Exhibition in London.  The firm’s cutlery was given a swan-song, with a fine exhibit of ivory-tipped and stag-handled table knives and forks, dessert knives and forks, veni-son carvers, and American hunting knives.  But pride of place was given to Ibbotson’s cast steel and edge tools – products which won a Prize Medal and upon which the firm had decided to concentrate. 

William Ibbotson died at his residence Steel Bank House on 4 October 1852, aged 62.  According to his obituary, long-standing physical infirmities had led him to withdraw from public life, but ‘some years ago he was one of the most stirring, liberal, and public-spirited of our townsmen’ (Sheffield Independent, 9 October 1852.).  His burial was in unconsecrated ground in the General Cemetery.  The business passed to his widow, Mary, and sons William Frederick Ibbotson (1820-1864) and Alfred Buckingham Ibbotson (1829-1908).  Initially, William F. Ibbotson was the senior partner.

William’s other sons, Henry Ibbotson Ibbotson (1822-1882) and Samuel Fisher Ibbotson (1818-1902), also became active in the firm.  In the 1850s, they had staffed the Pearl Street office in Manhattan.  However, although Ibbotson Bros’ transatlantic trade had continued, the start of the American Civil War was keenly felt in Sheffield.  The usual channels of trade were severely disrupted, and American manufacturers quickly stepped into the breach.  Recognising that the heyday of the US trade had passed, Ibbotsons made a major strategic decision.  In 1862, they abandoned Globe Works and sold it to J. Walters & Co.  Ibbotson Bros moved about ½-mile down the road to occupy new premises at Russell Street and Alma Street.  Ibbotsons named the factory Globe Steel Works, with the well-known ‘globe’ mark prominently displayed on the frontage.  It was still a large factory (W. F. Ibbotson was recorded in the Census, 1861, as a ‘merchant and steel manufacturer’ employing 200 men), but far less ostentatious than the former Globe Works.  The site was adjacent to Sheffield Union Workhouse.  In 1865, when interviewed by a government commission into child labour, Alfred B. Ibbotson stated that the company’s chief work was steel melting, converting, and tilting, railway spring making, file making, saw making, and the manufacture of small engineers’ tools (White, 1865⁵).

William F. Ibbotson died at Western Bank on 26 March 1864, aged 43, leaving under £20,000.  Alfred took over.  The firm became a limited company in 1872, with £120,000 capital (with £74,000 paid up).  Alfred and his brother Samuel – who owned about half the shares – became the managing directors.  Henry Ibbotson Ibbotson, the commercial traveller, was also a shareholder.  The Ibbotsons enjoyed a prosperous lifestyle.  In 1862, Alfred had married Louisa ‘Loulie’ Greenough Powers, who was the daughter of an American sculptor.  They built a large residence, Villa Ibbotson, in Florence, and in the 1870s Alfred retired.  He died in Florence on 22 June 1908, and was buried in the English cemetery there, leaving £27,025.  Henry Ibbotson Ibbotson (Alfred’s brother) was next in line and managed the company until his sudden death from an attack of bronchitis on 6 March 1882, aged 60.  He left £14,656.  Samuel F. Ibbotson succeeded him.  He died, aged 83, at his residence Hillbrow, Broomhall Park, on 6 January 1902.  Both Henry and Samuel were buried in unconsecrated graves in the General Cemetery.

Samuel left a widow, but no family.  However, his death did not end the family’s involvement in the firm.  In 1848, Mary (the second daughter of William Ibbotson) had married Ebenezer Rushton Talbot, a Wesleyan minister.  Their son, Frederick John Talbot (1851-1936), was born in Trowbridge and later became a clerk at Ibbotson’s.  He soon had a directorship in the firm, though friction was evident between Frederick and the other directors (Sheffield Independent, 8 November 1887).  These matters were eventually resolved, and Talbot became chairman.  In the early twentieth century, the firm was a profitable steel, tool, and engineering company.  Talbot himself developed technical expertise in buffers and springs; and was also regarded as an authority on the law relating to income tax, companies, and patents.  He remained chairman until his death on 23 January 1936, when he left £186,080.  He also left the Talbot Cuff Convalescent Fund, which he had launched in 1928 with his wife Sarah, to provide care for any patients of the Royal Infirmary, but especially employees of Ibbotson Bros.

In 1939, the firm was absorbed by Jonas Woodhead & Sons Ltd, Leeds.  The Ibbotson name was preserved until 1971, when Globe Steel Works became part of Woodhead Components Ltd (a group, which also owned James Christie & Sons).  After the 1970s, Woodhead’s vacated Globe Steel Works. 

After its heyday, Globe Works was occupied by a string of well-known cutlery names: J. Walters & Co, Unwin & Rodgers, John Moulson, and Charles Burgon.  Most of these firms, too, traded with the USA; most went bankrupt.  Eventually, Globe Works contained only a few ‘little mester’ workshops.  In 1970, the city authority tried to remove it from the register of buildings listed for preservation, so that it could be bulldozed for a motorway.  Later that decade, an arson attack damaged the building.  However, in the 1990s a public campaign led to the renovation of Globe Works and its listing as a Grade II* building.  In 2008, most of Globe Steel Works was demolished, but the factory frontage was preserved.  The famous ‘globe’ still looks out across Alma Street towards Kelham Island Museum.

^1. Hall, T Walter, Sheffield Pedigrees (Sheffield, 1915)
^2. Leader, Robert E, Reminiscences of Old Sheffield (Sheffield, 2nd edn 1876)
^3. Forbes, Arthur Carroll, The Descendants of William Forbes (Privately printed, 1955)
^4. Lloyd, G I H, The Cutlery Trades:  An Historical Essay in the Economics of Small-Scale Production (London, 1913)
^5. White, J E, Fourth Report of the Children’s Employment Commission (London, 1865)