Arthur Edward Furniss (1833-1910) was a silver smith and electro-plate manufacturer.  His family background was complicated.  In the parish register, he was baptised as Arthur Edward Townsend, with no father stated and his only parent in the register as Sarah, ‘spinster’.   Sarah’s maiden name was Townsend; apparently, the father was John Furniss.  Arthur began using the Furniss surname by 1858, when he began business in workshops at Holly Street (at the former address of Samuel Ardron).  He also kept an inn.  In 1861, he employed six men, two boys, and ten women.

Arthur’s personal life, though, continued to be complicated.  In 1861, he married a cousin, Ellen Furniss.  But he was soon featured in the newspapers as a ‘Faithless Lover’.  An affair before his marriage with Phoebe Mason, a respectable innkeeper’s daughter, resulted in a baby and a court case for breach of promise (Nottinghamshire Guardian, 11 March 1862).  He was ordered to pay £213 in damages and costs.   When Furniss failed to pay, he was sent to the prison at York Castle.  When he attempted to file for bankruptcy, he was accused of stripping himself of property to avoid payment (Gloucestershire Chronicle, 19 April 1862).  His friends appear to have bailed him out, but Furniss still had to pay a sum per week for maintenance.

Furniss continued trading and by 1864 his workshops were at Rockingham Lane (he was also victualler at the King’s Head, Tapton Hill).  He relocated to Carver Street by 1871, and then to Broad Lane after 1892 (following his purchase of the premises of George Wilkin.  In the nineteenth century, the firm apparently never registered a silver mark in Sheffield or London.  The founder died from heart trouble on 13 July 1910, aged 77, at his residence in Wilkinson Street.  His love of cricket and his exploits against the MCC featured in The Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 14 July 1910, under the heading, ‘A Veteran Sheffield Cricketer’.  The obituarist noted that Furniss was ‘an ardent follower of the game all his life’.  He was buried in the General Cemetery.  The value of his estate was resworn at £36,970.  His factory employed about seventy or eighty workers.  

His sons, James Edward (1862-1940), John Arthur (1864-1937), Frederick Charles (1865-1952) and Frank Wilson (1867-1930), took over the company.  However, they dissolved their partnership in 1919.   James Edward continued the firm, but in 1927 he retired.  He was ill and apparently had been ‘feeling the strain of business for some years …’ (Sheffield Independent, 1 January 1927.  His successor was Joseph Ephraim Percharde (1872-1959) – formerly a director of Gladwin Ltd – who launched A .E. Furniss, Son & Percharde Ltd, with £6,000 capital.  James E. Furniss was living at a hotel in Sutton, Surrey, when he died at a nearby nursing home on 3 January 1940.  He left £4,421.  The firm was active until 1962 and was last listed at St Mary’s Road.