The background of this spring knife manufacturer is uncertain.  The Census (1841) enumerated him as an apprentice cutler, living with 40-year-old cutler Thomas Bingham.   The latter was the father of William Ogden (see Bingham & Ogden).  By 1851, George Wright was a spring knife manufacturer at Norfolk Lane, living with his wife, Ann, and apprentice William Bingham (the son of Thomas).  He employed fifteen men.  George Wright continued to trade through the 1850s at Surrey Works, Cadman’s Lane / Norfolk Lane.  

However, he was insolvent in 1860 and signed an indenture with horn cutter William Horridge.   His former ‘Central Premises’ in Norfolk Lane were offered ‘To Let’.  These had steam power and grinding wheels, warehouses, offices, and workshops, and convenient hearths (Sheffield Independent, 4 August 1860).  In the following year, Wright’s bankruptcy notice described him as ‘of No.  48 Pond Street, and previously of Lawson Street, Broomhall Street … in lodgings, spring knife cutler, and previously of St Thomas Street, Portobello’ (London Gazette, 15 January 1861).  In 1862, he was listed as Pool Works, Burgess Street (living at Lawson Street).  By 1864, he had apparently moved to Heeley and was still a spring knife manufacturer.  But Wright’s subsequent life has proved difficult to trace.