Old Sheffield produced an incredible number of cutlery firms. Some of them left behind clear records, like Joseph Rodgers or Marshes & Shepherd, but there were a great many smaller companies who are known only by their work or a single directory listing.
Like most of the razors I’ve gotten, these came from eBay. In fact, all the razors in this post went through eBay. These put me in the unusual situation of having both too much and too little information, so all I can really do is lay out what I’ve learned and display the evidence.
Edward Allison and his wife Mary had a daughter, Catherine, in September 1819. Catherine’s baptism record lists her father as a razorsmith, but he doesn’t appear in any of the business directories until late 1820 when Pigot lists him as a Razor manufacturer and operator of the tavern The Barrel. Both the tavern and the razor manufacturing were in Little Sheffield.
Hawcroft & Pearson are first listed as operating from Eldon street in 1834. It’s hard to say if that’s when the business was founded.