The early experience of James Hancock (c.1819-1902) was apparently as a clerk.  Certainly, by 1849 he was working as a warehouseman.  By the mid-1850s, he was involved with William Harriss in Harriss & Hancock, electro-platers and gilders, Orchard Lane.  By 1858, Hancock was running his own enterprise as an electro-plater in Holly Street.  It was a small operation – employing in 1881 four men, six women, three boys, and five girls – but it enabled Hancock to acquire a residence in Wostenholm Road.  He retired in the 1890s and died on 1 June 1902, aged 83 (a year after the death of his wife, to whom he had been married for over fifty years).   They were buried in a grave in unconsecrated ground in the General Cemetery.   He left £33,552.  His son was Henry Hancock (1843-1887), who became an electro-plater, and lived at Apsley House, Station Road, Dore.  He died at Broomhall Place on 24 February 1887, aged 43, leaving £3,439.  His sons – Percy Griffin and Ernest Henry – founded Hancock Bros & Hutchinson.