William Sanderson (c.1796-1858) first appeared in a Sheffield directory in 1825 as a manufacturer of forks, butcher, shoe, cook and bread knives, and steels.   His address was 36 Hollis Croft.  At 55 Hollis Croft was Makin & Sanderson.  The partner in that enterprise was Charles Sanderson, though the precise relationship between the latter and William (if any) has not been discovered.  William briefly became a partner as a fork manufacturer with John Murfin at Backfields, but this was dissolved in 1832.   William relocated to Carver Street.  In 1841, he registered a design for a balance handle for knives and forks.  
 
In 1846, the press reported the explosion of an ‘infernal machine’ at Sanderson’s factory, which was sited between Carver Street and Rockingham Lane:  

Mr Sanderson’s house fronts Carver Street, and beside it is a smaller one, occupied by an engineman.  At the back of these is the wheel, and behind it the other workshops, in an irregularly built yard, enclosed all about by buildings two or three stories high.  Three privies stood against the wall of the wheel … The explosion took place at about 2 o’clock in the morning.  It shook all the adjoining property, shattering many of the windows, and was heard in very distant parts of the town.  The privies were completely blown up and laid in ruins (Sheffield Independent, 4 April 1846).

The press account deplored this attack on capitalists, but did not provide any reason for it.  Presumably, Sanderson was in dispute with the trade unions over the payment of dues, or wages, or employment of non-union workers.

William Sanderson’s sons, by his wife, Ann – Henry (1823-1881) and William (1827-1929) – joined the business, which during the 1850s was styled ‘& Sons’.  In 1850, William Jun. settled in New York, where he handled the company’s flourishing American trade from an office at Gold Street.  William Sen. died on 6 June 1858, aged 62, at his residence in Upperthorpe.  He left under £3,000.  His grave is in St Mary’s churchyard, Ecclesfield.  Henry in Sheffield and William Jun. in New York continued as partners.   

The brothers ended their partnership in 1866, with Henry intending to continue the Sheffield business.  In that year, Henry registered a patent for an ‘improvement’ in the manufacture of knives and forks.  In 1871, William Sanderson & Sons was listed as a cutlery casters and manufacturer of table, butchers’, and spear-pointed knives at Carver Forge Works, 96 Carver Street.  But it had ceased trading by 1876.  Henry continued to work as a commission agent, until his death in Sheffield on 18 June 1881.  He left £84 to his widow, Elizabeth (who was the daughter of Philip Ashberry).  Their son, Maurice Ashberry Sanderson (1870-1940), became a partner in Ashberry’s.  William Sanderson Jun. stayed in America, where he lived at Brooklyn and continued to trade as a cutlery importer and manufacturer at Gold Street.  He died on 4 December 1929, aged 102.  An obituary noted that he had lived in New York for sixty years and added that German competition had caused William Sanderson & Sons to withdraw from the American trade.  But ‘Mr Sanderson began a career of manufacturing along different lines’  (Brooklyn Daily Times, 6 Dec 1929).  His gravestone is in Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn.