According to its brief company history, A Century of Progress, 1828-1928, this enterprise was originally known as Wilson & Southern and was founded in 1828.  It was listed in 1833 in Edward Street.  One partner was Francis Southern (bapt.  21 February 1800-1877), who was apparently the son of Benjamin (a silver plater) and his wife, Jane.  He lived in Steel Bank.  The other partner was George Wilson in Edward Street.  Southern was the traveller, while Wilson managed the factory, which produced table cutlery and butchers’ knives.  In 1833, John Wilson took legal action against Wilson & Southern for imitating its mark (Sheffield Independent, 22 June 1833; Robson’s Birmingham & Sheffield Directory, 1839).  By 1840, Wilson & Southern’s address was Solly Street and Wheeldon Works.  A promising trade began with Mediterranean countries.  A full-page advertisement for Wilson & Southern in a Sheffield directory in 1845 listed table knives and forks, and Buenos Aires daggers and hunting knives.  The heads of royal personages were carved into the handles of carving knives and forks.

When Wilson retired in 1847, Samuel Richardson (1812-1887), who had been born in Norton, Derbyshire, became a partner.  The family was said to have been descended from the novelist Samuel Richardson.  In 1851, Southern & Richardson moved to Don Cutlery Works, Doncaster Street, Shalesmoor.  Samuel Gray Richardson (1851-1934), the second son of Samuel, joined in 1867, two years before Francis Southern retired.  The latter died on 22 February 1877, leaving under £9,000.  S.G. Richardson was apprenticed to his father for seven years as a knife maker and gained his Freedom in 1880.  When Samuel Sen. died on 26 February 1887 (leaving £27,478), his son became owner of the business.  He was Master Cutler two years later (Ironmonger, 31 August 1889).  He was known as a ‘valiant defender of the Church of England, and a strong supporter of the Tory party’ (Derry, 1902¹).

The firm manufactured table, pen and pocket, butchers’, farriers’, and Bowie knives, besides razors and scissors.  The corporate mark (1880) was a bird’s nest and three eggs:  hence the slogan, ‘NEST CUTLERY’.  Employment was 161 in 1871; and 197 in 1881 (a quarter of them boys and girls).  By the late 1880s, the workforce probably surpassed 200 (according to The Sheffield Independent, 6 September 1889, the firm employed about 300).  Certainly, it was amongst the top twenty cutlery manufacturers in the town.  However, working at the firm could be fatal.  In 1858, a nine-year-old girl was ‘frightfully mutilated’ after entanglement in an unguarded grindstone shaft (Sheffield Independent, 2 October 1858).  On 1 November 1899, a boiler explosion at Don Cutlery Works wrecked part of the factory.  Two workers died instantly; another young man was scalded to death; two men and a boy died later in hospital;  and another individual died soon afterwards.  The final death toll was seven.  The Board of Trade inquiry into one of Sheffield’s worst industrial accidents judged that no one was to blame (Sheffield Independent, 7 December 1899).

The firm registered a silver mark in 1902.  In 1912, S. G. Richardson took Harold Willey (1880-1973) into partnership and the business became ‘Ltd’ (capital £30,000).  Besides pocket and table knives, the firm manufactured ‘SHAVEESI’ safety razors, electro-plate, and holloware.  Other marks were ‘CIGAR’ and ‘SQUATTER’.  In 1919, Southern & Richardson joined Sheffield Cutlery Manufacturers Ltd, a merger led by Needham, Veall & Tyzack.  S. G. Richardson retired to Guiting Grange, Lower Guiting, near Cheltenham, and died there on 16 May 1934.  He was buried at St Michael’s Church, Lower Guiting, leaving £78,841.  In 1926, Harold Willey and co-director Henry Ernest Brant (1869-1941) relocated Southern & Richardson to Needham, Veall & Tyzack’s premises in Milton Street.  Sheffield Cutlery Manufacturers Ltd had made steady losses and the move was described as an opportunity to rationalise production.  However, it was a take-over and  Southern & Richardson survived only as a ‘name’ at Needham, Veall & Tyzack (as such it was listed in directories until the 1970s).  In 2013, part of the derelict Don Cutlery Works still stood in Doncaster Street.

^1. Derry, John, ‘Who’s Who in Sheffield’, bound volume of newspaper cuttings, Sheffield City Library Local Studies, 1902