This wooden-handled meat slicer (probably for ham or beef) is forged from shear steel. It has evidently been re-sharpened repeatedly – a sign of long service.  W. Brown & Sons did not apparently appear in any Sheffield directories.  However, the address (228 Oxford Street) provides a clue.  The Sheffield directory (1901) listed William Brown at that address as a salesman.  He was also enumerated in the Census in that year at 228 Oxford Street.  He was Nottingham-born, aged 21, and working as a buff, glazier, and polishing machinery salesman.  His wife was Mary A. Brown and he had an eight-month old son, William Reginald.  William Brown was employed as a worker, though this knife suggests at some point he traded alone.  Brown’s subsequent career is sketchy. In 1911, he was still a salesman, though by now he was working in the leather trade.  In the Census, he was lodging with his blacksmith brother, Thomas, and their mother (Jemima), at Attercliffe.  William Brown’s subsequent life has not been traced.