This branch of the Hotham family lived at Handsworth, where Richard Hotham (1739-1832) was a button mould maker and a Quaker.  Richard had three sons by his wife Milicent: Robert (1768-1805), Samuel (1777-?), and Richard Jun. (1781-1811).  In 1793, Edmund Sporle and Richard Hotham (presumably Sen.) registered a silver mark from Hawley Croft.  Sporle had married Hotham’s daughter.  Neither Sporle nor Hotham appeared in the 1787 directory, but a decade later Robert Hotham & Co was listed as a manufacturer of silver plated, ivory, horn, and bone hafted table knives at Hawley Croft.  The trade mark featured ‘IS’ and ‘HOTHAM’.   In 1797, Richard Hotham was listed in the Sheffield directory as a manufacturer of button moulds at Handsworth.  In 1801, two partnerships were dissolved: one between Robert and Samuel Hotham, and Jonathan Moore Jun., cutlers and button manufacturers; and another between Edmund Gurney Sporle and Richard Hotham, cutlers.  

A street plan (Sheffield Local Studies Library and Picture Sheffield) shows that Robert Hotham took out a lease in 1804 from Thomas Holy for a property on West Street.  But Robert died on 26 November 1805 and was buried at the Quaker burial ground, Sheffield.  His will was proved by his widow, Betty, with his estate valued at under £1,000.  Betty next went into partnership with Samuel Hotham (her husband’s brother) and Joseph Newton (Sporle & Newton).   Hothams & Newton, cutlers and factors, was dissolved in 1810.   Robert’s brother, Richard, died on 27 January 1811 and was buried as a Quaker at Handsworth.  Their father died at Handsworth on 18 September 1832, aged 93 (Leeds Intelligencer, 27 September 1832).