Robert Thompson (c.1830-1881), who was born in Ecclesall, was a self-tip handle maker, scale cutter, and horn merchant.  He was apparently first in business with John Finney as Thompson & Finney, self-tip handle manufacturer, Jessop Street.  The partnership had been dissolved by 1868, when Thompson was listed at Trafalgar Works.  At the start of the 1870s, he occupied Cambridge Street Horn Works, where he employed seven men.  Rawson & Turner had been previous tenants.  Thompson shared the premises with spring-knife maker, W. H. Wragg.  He advertised in the directory (1879) and on one occasion described his workshops as the ‘Original’ Cambridge Street Horn Works to differentiate it from a rival horn merchant (J. & H. Morton) in the same road.  

Robert Thompson died on 9 June 1881, aged 51: curiously, in the same village where the Mortons had been born – Stoney Middleton, Derbyshire.  He left £6,790.  His wife, Hannah, died in 1886, aged 57.  Thompson’s trustees may have continued the business, but in 1891 they offered Cambridge Street Horn Works to let.  It featured ‘central and spacious shops, with steam power, storage sheds, and cellars’ (Sheffield Independent, 18 March 1891).   The collection of workshops eventually became known as Leah’s Yard (see Henry Leah) and still stands in Cambridge Street.