According to its advertisements, Deeley’s was established in 1909.  The owner was George Alfred Deeley (1885-1959), who was born in Sheffield, the son of Samuel Edward Deeley (a silversmith) and his wife, Annie. In 1911, George was a spoon and fork filer at 19 Carver Street. His small-scale operation did not always appear in directories. In 1925, however, George Alfred Deeley & Co, cutlery manufacturer, was listed at 19 Carver Street.  Deeley was insolvent in 1928, but apparently continued to operate. In 1939, George Alfred described himself in the Register of England & Wales as a ‘machine spoon and fork filer own account’. By the end of the Second World War, Deeley was based at 72 Arundel Street, which was the tenement-style factory of W. & S. Butcher. The firm was styled A. Deeley & Co. It advertised spoon and forks and cutlery in The Ironmonger Diary (1950). George Alfred Deeley later lived at Knedlington Road, Howden, near Goole, and died on 28 March 1959, aged 73. He left £2,711 and a widow, Edith.  His unconsecrated burial was at Abbey Lane Cemetery.

The Deeley business was acquired by Sidney Herbert Greenfield (1920-1986) and his wife, Lily nee Jenkins. In 1963, they registered it as A. Deeley (Cutlery Manufacturers) Ltd, with a nominal capital of £500. The Greenfields began to specialise in ‘EPNS A1’ hotel cutlery and general stainless cutlery (trade name ‘DELITE’). Deeley’s mostly made for the wholesale trade or other cutlery manufacturers (who then marketed the products as their own).  In the early 1970s, Sid Greenfield planned to expand and bought a new factory building at Handsworth. By 1989, it was said to be producing 70 gross of stainless and electro-plated knives, spoons, and forks per week, using multi-polishing machines. One firm which came to rely on Deeley’s was Arthur Price & Co.  As John Price recounted in his autobiography (Price, 1997¹), Deeley’s had become ‘almost our second factory’. But Sid Greenfield died at Ulley, near Rotherham, on 25 July 1986, aged 66, leaving £50,740. He was buried at Handsworth Cemetery. His son-in-law, Barrie Rawlins, took over. However, Deeley’s was already struggling in the face of low-cost cutlery imports. The situation was resolved in 1993, when Deeley’s Handsworth factory was acquired by Arthur Price & Co as a source for cutlery and a home for its acquisition George Butler & Co. The registered address was Deelite House, Orgreave Drive, Handsworth.  In 2009, the Deeley’s name was changed to Arthur Price Hotel Services Ltd.

¹ Price, John, The Cutlers Tale (Lichfield, 1997)