Valentine Belfitt Vickers (1872-1929) was born in Dukinfield, Lancashire, the son of John Vickers and his wife, Annis.  Valentine’s father was a publican and grocer, who in 1881 was running the Red Lion public house in Braithwell, near Doncaster.  Valentine was lodging in Sheffield by 1891, where he was a ‘blind manufacturer’s apprentice’.  He became a traveller in the German silver and brass trade and by 1905 was operating V. B. Vickers & Co, spoon and fork (blank) manufacturer, in Headford Street.   By 1919, the address was Sylvester Street and Sylvester Gardens.  Vickers also had interests in Birmingham.  He registered silver marks and traded as a silversmith and manufacturer of flatware and spoons.  Some of the firm’s silverware was produced in Art Deco patterns.  

Valentine B. Vickers, of Grange Cottage, Ecclesall, died on 12 December 1929, aged 56.   He was shooting with a party of Sheffield gentlemen on the Duke of Rutland’s Haddon Estate, near One Arch Bridge, on the Coombes Road, at Bakewell.   His chauffeur (who was acting as his loader and dog handler) accidentally discharged a gun, when a dog pulled on a lead.  Vickers was shot in the back and died instantly (Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 13 December 1929).  He left £37,178 to his widow, Mary Hoyle Vickers.  The firm became a private limited company in 1930 (capitalised at  £20,000) and, under Mary H. Vickers, continued to trade as a silversmith at Sylvester Street and Lion Works, Birmingham.  Later it became involved in engineering and tool manufacture.   After 1962, Turners (Eyre Street) Ltd occupied its Sylvester Street premises.  V. B. Vickers was formally liquidated in 1981, when its address was Queen Street.