This enterprise was launched by Abraham Davy (c.1805-1884), who had been born in Keighley, Yorkshire.  His early life is obscure. He may have been related to the owners of David Davy & Co. In 1833, Abraham was listed as a pen knife maker in Coalpit Lane (now Cambridge Street).  Apparently, Abraham was briefly in partnership with John Hall, who was also in Coalpit Lane. After this was dissolved in 1833, Abraham moved to Broomspring Lane. In 1849, he advertised a range of dirks, American hunting knives, and surgeons’ knives. He exhibited at the Paris Universal Exhibition (1855).

Abraham and his wife, Catherine (c.1808-1864), had three sons:  Arthur (1836-1907), David (1840-1895), and Abraham (1847-1899).  In 1854, Abraham Sen. moved to Exchange Works on the corner of Headford Street and Egerton Street. By 1856, the business was restyled A. DAVY & SONS.  In 1861, Abraham employed eight men and four boys.  He was also landlord at The Exchange Hotel, Headford Street, where the family lived. Illustrated advertisements in directories in 1863 and 1864 give some idea of the extent of Exchange Works and the Hotel. In reality, it was small tenement block, with a corner beerhouse. It was a polluted environment – Davy was regularly summoned by magistrates for creating a smoke nuisance – and working conditions (as in most cutlery manufactories) were poor. In 1863, a woman became entangled in unguarded machinery and suffered a broken leg. Abraham Davy refused to pay compensation, but was ordered to pay £25 damages (Sheffield Independent, 25 June 1863).  An engine tenter, Edward Platts, caught his foot in a fly wheel and later died (Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 5 June 1875).

Export markets were evidently important. Davy’s products were listed as: ‘Pen, Pocket, Spanish, Dirk, American Hunting Knives, and Every Description of Table Cutlery, Suitable for the United States, Canadian and Australian Markets’.  A dirk lock-knife marked ‘A. Davy & Sons’ was found on the body of Abraham Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth, after he had been cornered and shot  (Newman, 1998 ¹, Taylor, 2013 ²). In the directory advertisement for 1864, Davy’s trademark was ‘I. D. FY.’

In the early 1860s, Abraham was partnered by his son David and George Bagshaw, who manufactured crucible steel (David had married Bagshaw’s daughter in 1862).  In 1866, this partnership was bankrupt (though the bankruptcy was discharged in the following year).  The American Civil War had presumably hit business and by 1871 Abraham employed only four men (according to the Census).  Abraham continued in the cutlery trade, but during the late 1860s and 1870s the trading names at Exchange Works were ARTHUR DAVY and DAVID DAVY. In 1868, Arthur and David advertised separately from that address. In the directory (1876), David Davy appeared in a list of Bowie knife makers.

At the end of the 1870s, the Davy family was still manufacturing table blades/knives at Exchange Works. In the Census (1881), Abraham Sen. and Arthur (both widowers) were living at the same address in Egerton Street: the former, a grinding wheel proprietor; the latter, a table blade manufacturer ‘by machinery’, employing 36 men. Abraham Jun. was also living in Egerton Street and was a table-knife blade ‘goffer’ (in other words, he machine-forged table blades). Similarly, his brother David was a table knife blade roller, who lived at a house on Ecclesall Road. Abraham Davy Sen. died at 277 Bramall Lane on 6 April 1884, aged 79. His burial in the General Cemetery was unconsecrated.  He left £1,928.

Trustees let Exchange Works and then filed for bankruptcy. The stock and plant of A. Davy & Sons, Exchange Works, was auctioned. The sale included the stock-in-trade of table, butcher, spear, shoe blades, and railway grease knives. Also for sale was about five tons of blade steel, six punching and shearing machines, a pair of eccentric rolls, 1-cwt steam hammer, a helve hammer, powerful flies, a variety of dies and moulds, two cranes and ropes, and all the office fixtures and fittings (Sheffield Independent, 16 January 1886).

David Davy died on 2 November 1895, aged 53, at Stalker Lees Road. He left £156 and was buried in the General Cemetery. Abraham, David’s younger brother, was living in Abbeydale Road in 1891 and working as a table blade maker. He died at the Royal Infirmary on 24 March 1899, aged 52. He was also buried in the General Cemetery. By the late 1890s. Arthur Davy was living at Bridgeport, Connecticut, and working as a cutler. He died on 25 February 1907 and was buried at Lakeview Cemetery at Bridgeport.  On the tombstone, his name appears beneath that of James S. Flood (1853-1905), another Sheffield cutler, who had settled at Bridgeport.

ARTHUR DAVY was a table blade manufacturer at Exchange Works, Egerton Street, between 1900 and 1914.  Apparently, this was Arthur Davy (1868-1945), who was the son of Abraham Davy Jun. In 1919, Arthur was based in Napier Street; then after the mid-1920s in Salmon Street.  He died at Herries Road on 20 May 1945, leaving £14,638.

¹ Newman, Marc, Civil War Knives (Boulder, Colorado, 1998)
² Taylor, Dave, ‘Cloak and Daggers’, Knife World (4 April 2013).