Eaton Walker & Co was established after the First World War.  A brief ‘wanted’ advertisement appeared in The Sheffield Evening Telegraph, 27 September 1919: ‘Young gentleman requires bed sitting room: away weekends and out all day’. The contact address was ‘B. W., c.o. Eaton Walker & Co, 10 Holly Street’.  A few days later, a slow combustion stove for a workshop was wanted.  By the summer of 1920, advertisements were placed for a teenage man to work in a cutlery shop on ‘best stainless’.  A ‘good opening was promised’ (Sheffield Evening Telegraph, 23 July 1920).  Presumably, the required staff were recruited, as in the next month apartments were needed at Millhouses for two young gentlemen.

‘B. W.’ was Bernard Walker (1895-1944), whose father was Bernard Eaton Peace Walker (1866-1940). Th e latter had been born in Sheffield and had a varied career as a steel merchant, colliery salesman, and poultry farmer.  By 1911, the Walker family was living at Eccleshill, north of Bradford.  Bernard was an apprentice printer compositor.  In 1922, Bernard married at a Methodist chapel at Eccleshill Annie Feather, a photographic assistant and  daughter of a cabinet maker.  Bernard was described in the marriage register as a cutlery manufacturer, living at Shipley: his father was a coal factor.  In the Sheffield directory (1925), Bernard was listed as the owner of Eaton Walker & Co, 10 Holly Street.  He resided at 33 Chatfield Road.  The use of ‘Eaton’ in the company name is puzzling (even though it derived from Bernard’s father).  However, a renowned iron founder in Sheffield had been named Walker, Eaton & Co, and possibly Bernard hoped to catch some of its reflected glory.

Eaton Walker & Co was clearly a modest undertaking.  It is known to have sold stainless table cutlery, with knives offered in the traditional 6-piece decorated cardboard box.  By 1927, Eaton Walker & Co was based at 17 Westfield Terrace, from where it continued to advertise for youths to work as table knife cutlers.  By 1939, the address had changed again to Sykes Works, a tenement factory in Milton Street.  In the Census of that year, Bernard was living at Elland, near Halifax, where he was a poultry farmer.  He died on 9 April 1944 at Stainland, Halifax, leaving £148.  The cutlery firm became defunct in the late 1940s.