John Brown (c.1793-1876) – not to be confused with steel maker Sir John Brown – was born in Scotland.  According to Leader (1876)¹, he introduced Scottish drapery in Sheffield (John Brown, draper, Norfolk Street, was listed in 1825).  Brown may have joined the Butchers and then H. G. Long.  He certainly partnered Samuel Tompkin (see Oakes, Tompkin & Ward) until 1835.  Brown next recruited George Wharton and George Curr.  In about 1835, he built Columbia Works, an integrated three-storey factory on Suffolk Road.  It covered 2,000 square yards and contained workshops, cellars, showrooms, counting houses, and cast steel furnaces.  Brown planned to exploit the American demand for cutlery and steel..  He marketed table cutlery and spring knives, including folding dirks marked ‘John Brown & Co’.  In 1836, he was appointed ‘Razor Maker in Ordinary’ to the King.  Brown applied to the Company of Cutlers to register ‘Columbia’ and ‘Royal’ as trade marks.   The application was rejected, though he was allowed to use a picture of St George and dragon, with the words ‘NULLI SECUNDUS VIRTUTI’.  

Brown expanded into cutlers’ shops and warehouses in Union Street and Eyre Street; and advertised for forty or fifty spring-knife hands (Sheffield Independent, 30 January, 23 April 1836).   Pigot’s Directory of Sheffield (1837) listed him as a merchant and razor manufacturer to His Majesty.  But he became bankrupt in 1839 and the factory and its stock (besides the contents of Brown’s house) were auctioned.  Upwards of £4,000 stock and tools were offered for sale, including finished and unfinished cutlery (table, dagger, and spring knives, and razors), hafts and scales, and 90 cutlers’ vices (Sheffield Independent, 26 January 1839).  Columbia Works was later occupied by Tillotson.   Brown moved with his family to Derby, where he became a tea dealer and then a manager in a life insurance office.  By 1869 – when his wife, Jane, died – Brown had returned to Sheffield.  He died in Broomhall Place, aged 87, on 24 August 1876, and was buried in Ecclesall.  He left under £300.  Brown’s manufactory (Columbia Place) still stands on Suffolk Road. 

^1. Leader, Robert E, Reminiscences of Old Sheffield (Sheffield, 2nd edn 1876)