Despite its grand title, Dominion Steel began as a modest safety razor blade manufacturer, based at Fleet Works, Queen’s Road.  Its history is difficult to untangle.  It was registered as a private limited company in 1927, with £2,000 capital.  The directors were James Raymond O’Connor, Harcourt Road; and A. D. Butterley, Heigh Lane, Sacriston, Durham.  The office was at Barnsley (Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 13 May 1927).  Butterley was a solicitor; O’Conner  managed an insurance company.  It was an investment vehicle and the partners knew little about safety razor production.  Fred Cam, an expert tool maker at St Mary’s Road, was hired to install machinery and staff the works.   Cam (who later a director of Wafer Razor Co Ltd) organised the factory and recruited three grinders, four burnishers, and twelve polishers.  

More borrowing was evidently needed.  In November 1927, debentures of £1,000 were issued to Mrs E. M. Butterley, Beech Grove, Barnsley.  In the following month, advertisements appeared for Dominion’s ‘FLEET’ branded safety razor blade.  The slogan was ‘Sheffield’s Best is the World’s Best’.  In July 1928, the firm occupied a portion of the adjacent Midland Tool Works, Queen’s Road, at an annual rent of £200 a year.  However, later that year a dispute arose with Cam, who took Messrs Harold Butterley and J. R. O’Connor to court.  Cam claimed that he had been given shares in the company, but had not been paid fully.  The defendants argued that the machines he had supplied were ‘rubbishy’; Cam countered that they had been ‘grossly neglected and not been oiled sufficiently’ (Sheffield Independent, 24 October 1928; Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 24 October 1928).  Cam wanted about £500, but eventually settled for £350 and costs.  

In November 1930, £400 in debentures were issued.  One of the firm’s directors was Ernest William O’Connor (1876-1944).  He had been born at New Place, Acton, London, the son of James Connor, a railway clerk, and his wife Keturah Thirzah.  He married in 1908, when he was a master mariner, and in the following year adopted the surname ‘O’Connor’.  A decorated troopship captain during the War, he was appointed OBE in 1931.  O’Connor’s presence explains the nautical theme in the firm’s branding, but his role in Dominion Steel and his relationship (if any) with the other O’Connors is unclear.  He  retired in 1933 after undergoing surgery in London.  He died on 8 April 1944 at Ealing, Middlesex, leaving £8,360.

After 1931, the key figures at the company were Leslie Honey (1894-1983) and William Duncan Jamieson (1882-1962).   Neither came from a technical background.  Honey was the son of James Cowper Honey (a law stationer) and his wife, Edith Jane.  Jamieson had been born at Banff in Scotland and was the son of James Jamieson, a railway employee.  In 1907, when he married, he was a journalist in Chesterfield.  In 1931, Honey and Jamieson were listed as directors of Safety Razor Blanks Ltd, which was registered at Queen’s Road, with £2,000 capital.  Its solicitor was H. Butterley, St Mary’s Place, Barnsley.  This firm supplied Dominion and other makers in Sheffield and London.  According to Tilbury (1996)¹, Dominion did so much contract work for other companies that ‘it is difficult to tell which of the many brand names were their own.  Dominion were also the biggest British supplier of ready-hardened blanks, as well as producers of cold-rolled blade strip’.
 
Under Honey and Jamieson, Dominion’s prospects brightened (Sheffield Daily Independent, 27 June 1933).  In 1934, they registered a safety razor patent on behalf of Dominion Steel.  In about 1939, Major Manufacturing Co Ltd was incorporated at Dominion’s address, 272 Queen’s Road, for the manufacture of hacksaw blades and metal cutting bandsaws.  In the Register of England & Wales (1939), Jamieson was living at Chesterfield, and was enumerated as a managing director and secretary of safety razor blades, surgical scalpels, metal cutting, band saws etc.  Honey was listed as a director and works manager of safety razor blades and surgical scalpels.  

Besides ‘FLEET’, Dominion trade marks included: ‘PHANTOM’, ‘DARLETTE’, ‘FAIRWAY’, ‘WISE OWL’, ‘MAJOR’, and ‘MINESSO’.  During the Second World War, Dominion produced a ‘Fleet Safety Razor Blade’, which was magnetized, so that when suspended by a thread in a glass of water it would act as a compass for wartime escapes.  After the War, Dominion’s history becomes more difficult to track.  During the 1950s, it continued to manufacture safety razor blades, but in the 1960s switched to industrial cutting blades.  William D. Jamieson, of 64 Archer Lane, died on 4 December 1962, aged 60, leaving £42,375.  He had also been works manager for Dronfield Tool Co and Dronfield Casting Co – two small enterprises in which a local medical man, Dr Howard Bennett Fletcher (1857-1939), had a stake.  Honey liquidated Major Manufacturing Co Ltd in 1967.  Dominion seems to have operated until the early 1970s.  Leslie Honey, of Dobcroft Road, died on 11 June 1983, leaving £93,362.

^1. Tilbury, Peter, The British Razor Blade Industry (Derby, 1996)