This is one of many films by a local amateur filmmaker, “Billy” Ibberson, made over a period of sixty years.  As well as making films related to his work, most of Ibberson’s films were of the family.  The Ibbersons owned a company going back to the seventeenth century, and which became the first company to manufacture stainless steel cutlery: George Ibberson & Co., Violin Cutlery & Plate Works, 112-116 Rockingham Street. It still exists today as part of the Egginton Group of...

This is one of many films by a local amateur filmmaker, “Billy” Ibberson, made over a period of sixty years.  As well as making films related to his work, most of Ibberson’s films were of the family.  The Ibbersons owned a company going back to the seventeenth century, and which became the first company to manufacture stainless steel cutlery: George Ibberson & Co., Violin Cutlery & Plate Works, 112-116 Rockingham Street. It still exists today as part of the Egginton Group of Companies.  For more on Ibberson see the Contexts for Yorkshire Beaches (1945) and Made in Sheffield (1954)  

The first documentary reference to Sheffield's cutlery trade comes from 1297, when Sheffield was granted a charter (or Town Trust) allowing for a weekly market and an annual fair.  In this year ‘Robert the Cutler’ is recorded in a tax return, the earliest surviving reference to the manufacture of cutlery in Sheffield.  From then references, both prosaic and literary crop up regularly, as in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, (1297) and in A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain, (1724) by Daniel Defoe.  Crucial to the growth of this industry was the converging of the five local rivers: the Loxley, the Don, the Sheaf, the Porter and Rivelin.  This, together with iron ore and a plentiful supply of timber (later coal) for burning, meant that it was an ideal spot for iron smelting.

Somewhat later the Company of Cutlers in Hallamshire (including the parishes of Sheffield and some outlying parishes) and the Master Cutler came into being through an Act of Parliament in 1624.  This gave it jurisdiction over: "all persons using to make Knives, Blades, Scissers, Sheeres, Sickles, Cutlery wares and all other wares and manufacture made or wrought of yron and steele, dwelling or inhabiting within the said Lordship and Liberty of Hallamshire, or within six miles compasse of the same."   So that down the succeeding generations, apprenticeships were regulated to ensure a high standard of workmanship.  The Hallamshire Company of Cutlers is still in existence.

To cut a long story short, by the mid nineteenth century, 90% of all knives in the world were being made in Sheffield.  It was in this period that a major breakthrough occurred with the invention of the Bessemer converter in 1855, which enabled the mass-production of steel from molten pig iron, prior to the open hearth furnace.  In their film on the history of cutlery making in Sheffield, Seven Hundred Years (1997), Sheffield Movie Makers note the diseases that blighted the lives of those that worked in the fast expanding factories as the industrial revolution took off: including pneumonia, silicosis, rheumatism and bronchitis.  The heat was so strong from the furnaces that the workmen had to drink between ten to twenty pints of, relatively weak, barley wine or beer during the course of a shift – water was unsafe.  It is no coincidence that Attercliffe Road, through the heart of Sheffield’s old industrial area, had the most pubs per mile in the country.

The next major breakthrough in steel came with the development of stainless steel, principally by metallurgist Harry Brearley in 1913 as he was working in the Brown - Firth research laboratory in Sheffield – see the Contexts for The Hub of the House (1945) and Firth Brown- a Tour of the Works (1957).  Before the year was out, Ibberson was making stainless steel cutlery, the first anywhere in the world.  This was a major breakthrough, not least because it made the cleaning of cutlery so much easier. 

By 1947 some 30,000 men and women were working in the cutlery industry in Sheffield – down to just 3,000 by 1997.  Yet, in the year before, a factories report in 1946 found that 77 out of 313 cutlery factories in Sheffield were unfit for use.  Many worked in small workshops, or at home, right through to the 1970s and ‘80s.  In the 1920s and ‘30s buffing was the main occupation of women in Sheffield.  As Lynne Fox states: “Being a Buffer Girl, was a dangerous trade.  Most buffers wore an overall, called a buff-brat, which was usually made out of white calico. This has short sleeves that the women often rolled up high to avoid getting them caught in the machine. A red neck rag prevented flying sand from getting inside. The women used the brown paper that was readily available for wrapping the finished cutlery as their main protection from flying ‘muck’. They made large aprons from this and also wrapped it around their legs and feet.”

The picture is not entirely clear at present as to the state of the cutlery industry in Sheffield: the recession poses a continuing threat.  Recently the UK’s largest silversmiths, Sheffield based Carrs Silver took over the trade and assets of the former Nickel Blanks group of companies – some 300 years old – from Osborne Tableware.  One database of businesses lists 18 companies manufacturing cutlery in Sheffield, while a member posting on the Sheffield Forum lists over 30 – although certainly many have now gone.  Whatever the exact picture, Sheffield still regards itself as the home of cutlery, and remains at the forefront in the production of high quality silverware.

References

Lynne Fox (Summarised by Jessica Thomas) South Yorkshire Women in Industry

Sheffield Records Online: Sheffield Master Cutlers & Apprentices

A Sterling Effort - saving Sheffield's Cutlery Industry

List of companies incvolved in the manufacture of cutlery in Sheffield (posted by a member of Sheffield Forum)

Further reading

Binfield, C., and Hey, D., Mesters to Masters: A history of the Company of Cutlers in Hallamshire, Oxford, 1997.

Clare Jenkins, On the Knife Edge : the Inside Story of the Sheffield Cutlery Industry, SCL Publishing, 1989.