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Thought to be William Cooke (c.1831-1872). SCC Picture Sheffield (arc02504)
An advertisement has the business starting in 1738, though this may refer to its progenitor Samuel & John Saynor at Bank Street. Samuel Saynor’s son was also named Samuel (1786-1839). By 1811, he was apparently trading at Meadow Street, but by 1816 had moved Edward Street as a manufacturer of table, pen and pocket knives in. He died on 22 April 1839, aged 53.
Samuel’s son, John (1810-1849), took over the firm, which by 1845 was Samuel Saynor & Son. In 1847, John married Sarah Ann Armstrong (1818-1907), the daughter of a Shadwell mariner. But John died at Broomgrove Villa on 22 May 1849, aged 39. Like his father, he was buried at St Philip’s churchyard. Sarah Ann inherited the firm and was enumerated in the Census (1851) in Broomgrove as a 36 year-old ‘manufacturer’. Later that year, she married William Cooke (c.1831-1872), a young warehouse manager (perhaps at Saynor’s). The firm became Saynor & Cooke, with Sarah and William living at Ash Mount, Broomhill. They found a niche: pruning, budding, and grafting knives. In 1851, at the Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace they won a Prize Medal. The Edward Street premises were Paxton Works (named after Joseph Paxton, the gardener and designer of the Crystal Palace). Gardening handbooks, such as Charles McIntosh, The Book of the Garden (London, 1855), praised Saynor’s peach pruners (‘deservedly popular’) and budding knives (‘well-adapted for the purpose’). By 1861, Saynor & Cooke employed thirty men. In 1862, Jacob Greaves (who had once been manager to his brother, the shear maker Isaac Greaves) stated that the ‘entire management’ of Saynor & Cooke was under his charge (Sheffield Independent, 27 May 1862).
William Cooke died at Clifford Villa, Abbeydale, on 18 September 1872, aged 41. He left under £2,000. Sarah Ann again took control of the firm. Her son, William Cooke (born c.1853), became a partner, but he apparently took little part in the business. In December 1874, he was charged with stealing £180 from a friend. The court proceedings descended into farce, when it transpired that the ‘robbery’ had taken place during a drunken perambulation through pubs and a brothel (Sheffield Independent, 2 January 1875). The case was dismissed. Sarah Ann recruited a new partner, John Ridal (c.1804-1907), who had been a little mester making spring knives in Crosspool. Ridal became a manager of a cutlery works (probably Saynor’s). In 1881, Saynor, Cooke, & Ridal employed 37 workers. The firm’s horticultural knives were exhibited at major industrial exhibitions – Paris (1855), London (1862), Paris (1878), Melbourne (1888), and Calcutta (1884) – where they collected a string of awards.
John Ridal’s sons included George (c.1845-1940), who became a partner, but left in 1898; John Henry Ridal (1853-1915), who possibly worked in the office; and James Crownshaw Ridal (1850-1923), who was a manager (perhaps at the firm). John Ridal and Sarah Ann Cooke died in the same year. John on 8 October 1907, aged 93, at his residence in Sandygate Road. He was buried in Fulwood, leaving £5,817. Sarah Ann, of Ranmoor Road, died on 9 November, aged 88. She left £1,609 to her daughter, Clara Clifford Cooke (1855-1930). The Cookes and Ridals retained an interest through Miss Clara C. Cooke and Robert Hudson Ridal (1886-1959). The latter was the son of James C. Ridal. Clara, of Stannelts, Crimicar Lane, Fulwood, died on 25 November 1930, leaving £1,607 (the sum bequeathed by her mother).
Until the late 1930s, Saynor, Cooke, & Ridal was based at Paxton Works, Edward Street, under Stanley and Gladys Wightman (the former a trustee and nephew of Clara); Robert Hudson Ridal; and Nelson Crookes Peel (1888-1954), a Ridal trustee. In 1938, the Wightmans withdrew. The firm soon ceased trading, though Paxton Works and ‘Saynor, Cooke & Ridal’ reappeared after the War in Milton Street, where Needham, Veall & Tyzack had acquired the Saynor marks: ‘OBTAIN’, ‘RAINBOW’, ‘BICYCLE’ (with a picture of a penny-farthing), and ‘SAYNOR’.