This ‘CUTQUICKER’ knife was probably made towards the end of the 1920s or in the early 1930s, when various Sheffield makers (see Gillott Cutlery Co and Paget & Senior) copied an American innovation: the serrated edge for bread knives.  Ludlam was a relatively common family name in the cutlery trades (Fred Ludlam), though its members rarely surfaced in directories as cutlers. Only one reference has been found so far: in 1933 the Sheffield directory listed Frederick Ludlam, table knife hafter, at Matilda Street.

A Ludlam descendant (Fraser Ludlam) believes that ‘F. Ludlam & Son’ was linked to Frederick Ludlam (1857-1940), who before the First World War was a working table-knife cutler. He is known to have worked at Harrison Bros & Howson in Carver Street, alongside his son, Percy (1890-1986). In 1905, Frederick was fined £1 10s [£1.50] for allowing Percy to continue working when he had scarlet fever, despite repeated complaints from his fellow workmen (Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 17 November 1905). Frederick’s eldest son, Frederick Maurice ‘Henry’ (1886-1971), had left Sheffield before the War to find work in Birmingham. He returned to Sheffield in the early 1920s. Surviving photographs suggest that the Ludlams occupied a small workshop in which they hafted and finished table knife blades and also assembled cutlery canteens.