This company was not listed in the 1919 Sheffield directory.  Its first mention in newspapers is a brief advert in The Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 12 June 1920, for the sale of pen and pocket knives.  The address was simply ‘Loxley’.  In 1922, L. M. H Manufacturing Co was listed as a tool maker at Duke Street Lane, Park.   This was a backstreet and presumably the firm was a factoring and not a manufacturing business.  By the mid-1920s, L. M. H. had an office (18 Hermitage Street) and a Works (65 St Mary’s Lane).  The only information on its activities is contained in brief ‘Wanted’ advertisements in the local press.  It employed table blade buffers, packing staff, and those with experience in processing xylonite-handled table knives.  The vacancies were usually for girls and women.  For example, one advertisement asked for: ‘Girl, experienced, for cutlery and general warehouse; only live workers need apply’ (Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 3 February 1925).  The ownershop of the company is a mystery.  But the telegraphic address was ‘MALSAH’, which is Haslam spelled backwards (a name which also contains the letters LMH).   An ‘LMH’ table knife in the Hawley Trust Collection is identical to one marked ‘L. M. Haslam & Company’ – surely not a coincidence.

PictureSheffield has photographs of LMH’s premises, which show a typical tenement-style block.  Conditions in such workshops were likely to have been poor.  L. M. H. remained at St Mary’s Lane, but in 1932 the assets were acquired by Henry Taylor Ltd (a carving tools maker), which also owned cutlery manufacturer H. H. Taylor & Son, Solly Street (Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 23 July 1932).  At that time, L. M. H. was described as a maker of shoe makers’ tools and other artisan tools.  In 1935, Sheffield Corporation accounced that 65 St Mary’s Lane (‘used as a cutlery works’) and 18 Hermitage Street were to be demolished as part of a slum clearance (Sheffield Daily Independent, 16 November 1935).   It is likely that the photographs held by Picture Sheffield were taken at this time.