Several cutlers with this name appeared in directories.  An Enoch Drabble was listed as a maker of ‘common’ pen and pocket knives in Green Lane in the 1787 Directory of Sheffield.  His trade mark was ‘USE’ (later used on saws by Richard Groves).  In 1797, Enoch Drabble, pen and pocket knife cutler, was based in Eyre Street (trade mark ‘KRKR’).  The name then disappeared from directories until 1828, when a Drabble (apparently Enoch), a cutlery manufacturer, was active at Wing’s Yard, Bailey Street.   In 1833, Enoch Drabble was listed as a pen and pocket knife cutler in Bailey Street and by 1837 as a maker of ‘American hunting knives’.  Flayderman (2004)¹ depicts examples of Bowies knives on which Drabble stamped the words ‘Celebrated’ and ‘Royal Cutler’ as marketing slogans.   One knife is marked ‘Bowie Knife’.  Flayderman believed that it may be one of the earliest knives to be marked in this way.   Since Enoch Drabble was last listed in an 1839 directory and apparently died in Trippet Lane in June 1840, aged 39 (and was buried in Portobello), he may be right.

^1. Flayderman, Norm, The Bowie Knife: Unsheathing an American Legend (Woonsocket, RI, 2004)