Surgical instrument maker Hutchinson’s was described in The Century’s Progress (1893) as the ‘oldest house in the district, if not in the kingdom’.  It was founded by William Hutchinson, the son of Matthew Hutchinson, a coach maker at Shiregreen.  William was apprenticed to scissors maker Nicholas Timm (or Timms) in Coalpit Lane and became a Freeman in 1796.   William Hutchinson’s first address in 1815 was in Church Street, and then in 1818 he was listed in Pinstone Lane (as a maker of scissors and scissor knives).  By 1822, he had established himself as a scissors manufacturer at 10 Pinstone Street (where the Hutchinsons also operated The Crown pub).  In 1822 and 1828, William Hutchinson & Son was listed as a maker of ‘fine scissors, scissor knives, pen knives and razors, silver and pearl shank scissors, crimping and goffering machines’.  The ‘son’ was William (born to William and Mary in 1800), whose brother, Henry, was born in 1812.   

According to The Sheffield Independent, 18 July 1887, their scissors were the ‘finest and best of their kind’, and the firm introduced the scissor-knife and other novelties.   The story goes that on a visit to London in 1820, William Jun. was unable to sell his products, so he switched to the manufacture of surgical instruments.  His first order from Millikin’s on the Strand was for scarificators (used for ‘cupping’).  What had been ‘an exclusive trade in London was better done in Sheffield, where it created a new industry’ (Stainton, 1924¹).  

By 1833, the business in Pinstone Street was making scissors, surgeons’ instruments, stomach pumps, and elastic trusses.  William Hutchinson Jun. had found an ‘unlimited field for his enterprise and genius’.  He studied anatomy and devised new instruments, including a spring fleam for horses.  He made his own forceps for dental work and to advertise them offered to extract teeth without fee.  He increasingly directed the business.  In 1834, William Hutchinson Sen. withdrew (he died, aged 76, at his residence Broom Place after ‘a protracted illness’ on 6 July 1843 and was buried in Ecclesall).  William Jun. now partnered Henry, with the business re-styled as W. & H. Hutchinson.  It moved to Norfolk Street, where it was to remain until the early 1850s.   Drake’s Road Book of the Sheffield & Rotherham Railway (1840) has a full-page advertisement for the enterprise, with an engraving of Hutchinson’s premises.   The firm also manufactured razors, using the ‘Pipe’ mark, which William Hutchinson had bought from a man named Birks for £35.  When surgical instruments supplanted this trade, in 1843 Hutchinson sold the mark for £135 to George Wostenholm.

The firm’s trade was international.   When the Modern Greece – a Confederate blockade runner, which ran aground in North Carolina in the summer of 1862 – was salvaged a hundred years later, several instruments made by Hutchinson’s were amongst the rescued items (Bright, 1977²).  By 1868, the company’s address was Duke Street, Moor.  The brothers had become well-to-do: William lived in Collegiate Crescent; Henry at Storth Lodge, Ranmoor.   William became Master Cutler in 1857 and later Alderman.  He was popularly known as an ‘economist’ – a term meant sarcastically, because of his miserliness.  His obituary (Sheffield Independent, 18 July 1887) was unflattering.  He was described as a man who was loathe to increase the salary of a valued and efficient servant and who regarded the expenditure of the School Board on the education of a young man as a ‘reckless extravagance’.  William Hutchinson retired in 1862, leaving Henry to run the business with Joseph Tomlinson and William Tomlinson Jun.  Henry Hutchinson withdrew in 1877, leaving Joseph Tomlinson and George Tomlinson (a nephew of William Hutchinson) as the partners.  By 1881, the business in Matilda Street employed 25 men, six boys, seven women, and a girl.  According to The Century’s Progress (1893), about a hundred workers were employed, with a wide range of surgical, dental, and veterinarian instruments made on the premises.  

William died on 16 July 1887, aged 87, at Collegiate Crescent, leaving £17,334.  Henry died at Storth Wood Lodge on 23 January 1898, aged 85, leaving £22,941.  Their remains lie in Ecclesall churchyard.  The business moved to Garden Street around the turn of the century.  By 1911, George Tomlinson had retired and he died on 1 January 1915, leaving £11,642.  Henry Phillips Bullas (1862-1922) became proprietor, though after his death Hutchinson’s moved to Cemetery Road (presumably after William Skidmore, had acquired the name).  By the early 1970s, the address was Allen Street.

^1. Stainton, J H, The Making of Sheffield, 1865-1914 (Sheffield, 1924)

^2. Bright, Leslie S, The Blockade Runner ‘Modern Greece’ and the Cargo (Raleigh, NC, 1977)