Little is known of William Harwood’s background.  He was born in the 1760s, but does not seem to have been a working cutler.  The apprenticeship rolls of the Company of Cutlers show only that William Harwood (presumably this individual) purchased his Freedom in 1791.  Three years previously, Harwood and Lewis Thomas had opened an ironmongery shop in Market Place, so that they could sell locks, hinges, brass work, and other hardware (Sheffield Register, 10 May 1788).  The shop traded for a decade.  

A street plan (dated 1792) at Sheffield Local Studies & Archives [Picture Sheffield] depicted the premises of William Harwood & Co at the corner of Howard Street and Arundel Street (backing onto Fourteen Foot Lane).   William Harwood apparently established this firm, so that he could operate more generally as a cutlery merchant and manufacturer.  In 1797, besides Harwood & Thomas (ironmongers and hardwaremen) at Market Place, Harwood, Johnson & Thomas was a pen and pocket knife and razor maker at 12 Howard Street (trade mark ‘HARWOOD & CO’).  The other partner was George Johnson (possibly).   Amongst the products marketed by William Harwood & Co were ‘Pacific Razors’, which were advertised as:

Constructed upon a principle entirely new, and are calculated to render the practice of shaving perfectly safe, easy, and pleasant; being so secured by a silver guard, that even Gentlemen of the most delicate nerves may shave without the least danger of cutting.  The case contains six blades (of the best steel, tempered with peculiar care) fitted to one haft by the means of a spring; so that when the blade in use becomes dull, it may be replaced with the utmost facility, by which means Gentlemen in the Army and Navy, Travellers, etc, may be accommodated for a considerable length of time (Leeds Intelligencer, 9 September 1799).

In 1801, William Harwood, George Johnson, and Thomas Lewis registered a silver mark from 12 Howard Street.   By 1811, William Harwood & Co was listed as a manufacturer of fine cutlery, Arundel Street; Harwood & Thomas was a merchant and manufacturer at George Street.  Harwood and Thomas also became involved (with Peter Spurr in Samuel Bennett & Co, a pocket knife maker, though this was dissolved in 1813.  Two years later, George Johnson left Harwood & Lewis.  At Arundel Street, Harwood and Thomas were joined by Charles Heaton.  The firm – Harwood, Thomas & Heaton – specialised in table knives.   By 1816, Harwood and Lewis had also joined John Watson, Pass & Co, silver platers, at Hartshead.   This firm was dissolved in 1822.

In 1791, William Harwood had married Elizabeth (c.1868-1847), the daughter of Robert Unwin.  Soon after the marriage, she became a staunch Methodist.  They had at least nine children, mostly sons:  William (1793-1838), Edward (1796-1852), Robert Unwin (1798-1863), John (1799-1823), Samuel (1802-1850), Henry Paul (1808-1852), and Joseph Unwin (1810-1858).   By the 1820s, several of them had joined the business.  In 1821, Wm Harwood & Sons was listed as a merchant, factor, and plater, table knife, and razor manufacturer, Norfolk Street.  The firm began to establish a transatlantic trade.  John Harwood sailed for New York in 1820.  Two years later, he married Ann Try in Montreal.  In 1821, his brother Robert Unwin followed him to Montreal, which became the base for the Harwoods’ activities in North America.  

However, John Harwood died on 27 March 1823, aged 24, at Montreal, after suffering ‘a lingering illness’ (Sheffield Independent, 17 May 1823.   He was buried at Montreal’s Christ Anglican Church.  In the same year in Sheffield, Charles Heaton withdrew from Harwood, Thomas & Heaton.   On 6 August 1823, only a few months after his son, William Harwood Sen. died after ‘an apoplectic attack … to the great grief of his friends, and the deep regret of the community at large, of which he was a worthy member’ (Sheffield Independent, 9 August 1823).  He was interred at Carver Street Methodist Chapel, where his tomb still stands in the chapel yard (fronting West Street).  Frustratingly, the newspaper obituary did not state his age and other evidence is conflicting.  The inscription on the tomb has not weathered well, but appears to record his death ‘in the 60th year of his age’.   

In Sheffield, William Harwood & Sons continued to trade under William Jun. and Edward; while Robert Unwin developed the business in Canada.  In Montreal, the Robert-Unwin-Harwood Building was erected in about 1824 (it still stands in Saint-Paul Street).  After marrying into the local Montreal nobility in late 1823, Robert Unwin became ‘seigneur’ of Vaudreuil, a Montreal township.  For a time, he worked the business and became ‘one of the early Montreal merchants to invest in manufacture, divide up the labour process, and initiate technological change’ (Bradbury, 2011¹).   But his wife’s inheritance enabled him to retire as a merchant and enjoy the life of a wealthy landowner and politician.  He died at the family mansion at Vaudreuil on 12 April 1863, and was buried at  Mont-Royal Cimetiére at Montreal.

The partnership with his brothers had been dissolved in 1828.  Edward retired in 1832.  William died in New York on 23 October 1838.  Meanwhile, their younger brother Samuel had joined William Sansom.   In 1833, they registered a silver mark in Norfolk Lane.  Sansom, Harwood & Co was next listed as merchant and factor at 36 Norfolk Street, but in 1835 this ended amidst tensions between the partners (Sheffield Independent, 7 March 1835).  Samuel registered his own silver mark in that year.  Samuel Harwood & Co was launched for the manufacture (or factoring) of table and silver-plated dessert knives from an address in Union Street (formerly occupied by tool maker, Robert Sorby).  Samuel was granted his Freedom from the Company of Cutlers in 1838.   By 1841, the address was Norfolk Street and Norfolk Lane, with Samuel residing in Glossop Road.   His trade mark was a coronet (picture) above the word ‘ALPHA’.  That mark and ‘Sansom & Harwood’ were stamped on Bowie knives made for Graveley & Wreaks.

In the early 1840s, Samuel retired in favour of George S. P. Greening, Thomas Nicholas Greening, and Charles Goodwin.  In 1849, Burdekins & Greening (late S. Harwood & Co) was listed as a merchant and cutlery manufacturer at Norfolk Street and Norfolk Lane.  This partnership (Thomas Pierson Burdekin, Joseph Burdekin, and Thomas N. Greening) was dissolved in 1850.  The ‘ALPHA’ mark was acquired by Harrison Bros & Howson.

Samuel Harwood died near Leamington on 29 June 1850, aged 49.  A flat gravestone (next to William Sen.’s tomb) can be seen in the yard of Carver Street Methodist Chapel.   The inscription memorialises other family members, including Samuel’s mother, who died on 2 October 1847, aged 79.  Edward Harwood died in Dumfries on 2 April 1852, after admission in the previous year to Crichton Royal Institution for Lunatics.  He left under £2,000.  Of the other brothers: Henry Paul became a physician and died in London, after admission in 1851 to Sussex House, a mental asylum (it was the same year as Edward was institutionalised).  Joseph Unwin prospered as a London solicitor, who left nearly £8,000 at his death in 1858.

^1. Bradbury, Bettina, Wife to Widow: Lives, Laws, and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Montreal (Vancouver, 2011)