In a brief bicentenary history (Quality, December 1960), this company claimed a foundation date of 1760.  However, it added that this was ‘modest’, because the business had originated much earlier with James Whiteley.   The identification offered was the Freedom granted to William Whiteley (son of James, a scissors smith) in 1776.  In the 1787 Directory of Sheffield, James Whiteley, was listed as a scissor smith at Gibraltar (trade mark ‘ULM’).  A corporate mark ‘332’ was granted by the Company of Cutlers to George Whiteley, the son of William, in 1791.  However, the enterprise did not appear in Sheffield directories until the late 1830s, when it was operated by William Whiteley (c. 1797-1847).  He was enumerated in the Census (1841) as a scissors smith in Wentworth Street, where he lived with his wife, Elizabeth, and their family.  He became insolvent in 1844.  
 
William Whiteley, New Street, Park, died on 9 November 1847, aged 50.  Until about 1862, the enterprise was directed by his widow, Elizabeth.  She employed 20 hands in 1851.  Apparently, she insisted on stamping products with the name ‘E. Whiteley’ and was a dominant personality: ‘She smoked a clay pipe; and in the days when travelling was still often far from a comfortable process, she travelled considerably for the business, particularly in Ireland, where she established the reputation of Whiteley scissors and founded a good market for them’ (Quality, 1960).   The firm’s ‘fine scissors’ won exhibition medals in London (1851, 1862) and in Paris (1855).  Elizabeth’s display at the Great Exhibition was described as mostly the work of her sons.  The ‘handsome assortment’ contained ‘a pair of large and several pairs of small show scissors; with about 60 pairs of useful scissors of various kinds, and with various ornamental designs – as the snipe, the swan, the pheasant, the stork, etc.  The large show scissors are very appropriately designed, displaying the Sheffield arrows and an inscription commemorative of the Exhibition’ (Sheffield Independent, 29 March 1851).

Elizabeth was listed at various addresses, the last of which was Hague Lane.  She died in Norwich Street on 7 January 1868, aged 65.  By 1865, the business was again named ‘William Whiteley’ (this was Elizabeth’s son, William); and in 1871 it was at Phoenix Works in Rockingham Street as a manufacturer of every description of scissors and tailors’ shears.   Rockingham Street remained Whiteley’s address until the 1970s.  In about 1879, William Whiteley acquired the assets and marks of Thomas Wilkinson & Son.   In 1881, William told the Census that the firm employed 38 workers (the company history, though, says that number was a hundred by the end of that decade).  William Whiteley, Gell Street, died on 3 November 1882, aged 55.  He left £2,874.  

By 1900, the family was living in Western Bank, with the next William Whiteley (1857-1945) in charge and his 16-year-old son, William, working as a clerk.   The firm became a private limited company in 1920, with £6,000 capital, at Phoenix Works, Rockingham Street.  William Whiteley was managing director.  The other directors were his sons, William Jun. and A. H. Whiteley (Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 10 April 1920).  The firm remained typified by its ‘father-to-son’ ownership and the long service of some of its employees.   During the Second World War, Whiteley’s succeeded in devising non-sparking shears for cutting up explosive sheets; and was hard pressed to supply the demand for pinking shears – the war having stimulated home dressmaking.  

William Whiteley died on 16 April 1945, aged 88, leaving £3,927.   His son, William, who was the managing director, died on 6 April 1950, aged 66, leaving £1,435.  This left the latter’s brother, Alwyn Henry (Harry) Whiteley, as managing director alongside his son, H. W. Whiteley, as works director.  Long servers included Walter Parkin, a foreman, who died in harness in 1939 after working at Whiteley’s for 75 years (since the age of ten); and Joseph Lloyd, who retired in 1956 (aged 83) after seventy years at the firm.   Harry Whiteley died, aged 77, on 19 February 1966, leaving £5,011.  He had spent sixty years in the trade.  His son took over.  By the 1980s, Whiteley’s had moved to Garden Street.   In 2007, with Garden Street marked for redevelopment, Whiteley’s had vacated these premises (formerly St Luke’s National School) and moved to Holbrook Industrial Estate, Sheffield, where it continued to market scissors.   The firm celebrated 250 years in 2010.