When William Smith died on 1 May 1931, aged 90, his newspaper obituary described him as ‘Sheffield’s Former Oldest Workman’, with ‘78 Years With One Firm’ (Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 2 May 1931).   That firm was Joseph Rodgers & Sons, where William had served his apprenticeship.   He had been born in Sheffield, the son of Joseph Smith (a saw maker) and his wife, Sarah.   William apparently married late in life (he was unmarried in 1881, when he was living with his parents in New George Street).    By 1901, he was a widower boarding at an address in Boston Street.  In 1911, he was still a boarder, but dwelling in Clarence Street.  In a celebratory history of Joseph Rodgers & Sons (Under Five Sovereigns, 1911), William was photographed, aged 70, sitting with a large group of long-serving workers (his length of service was 57 years).   

In 1926, he was awarded a £3 prize for having the longest service record of any man still working (Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 20 February 1926).  For decades, he had a workshop at 6 Norfolk Street, but at the end of the 1920s he had to transfer to a smaller workshop at Rodgers’ spring knife department at Pond Hill.  When a newspaper reporter visited him, ‘he was busy leaning over a bench putting the finishing touches to a number of pen knives.  This is not his only line, however, for he is an experienced cutler in all directions; and during his long service with the firm has made hundreds of thousands of knives.  He says he has no intention of retiring.  He would much rather work for it provides him with something to do (Sheffield Daily Independent, 28 May 1930).  However, later that year he did retire with a pension and a silver cup.  At his funeral, the vicar of St. James’s remarked that William Smith ‘was one of the old school who loved their work more than the money they got out of it’ (Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 6 May 1931).   He left effects of £290.  His probate gave his address as Franklin Street and place of death as Sharrow Lane (the newspapers, though, stated that he died at Sherrington Road).