Joseph Turner (1838-1907) was born in Sheffield, the son of James and Jane Turner.  The family lived in Hague Lane / Norwich Street in the Park.   Joseph’s uncle was a razor manufacturer and his father, James, was a razor smith.  However, the latter died when Joseph was a boy (possibly in 1846).  Joseph was soon helping to support his widowed mother.  In the Census (1851), he was enumerated as a 12-year-old razor smith.  According to a later account (Nutt, 1919¹), Joseph Turner learned his trade at William Butcher, before becoming an accomplished razor maker for other firms.  

In 1870, Turner left for the USA.  His passage was paid by Heinisch & Sons in Newark, New Jersey.  Heinisch was emerging as a leading shear manufacturer, but he contracted Turner to help establish a razor plant.  It was not a success.  In 1872, Turner – having saved as much as he could  – left Heinisch and with William Cowlishaw launched Turner & Cowlishaw as a manufacturer of razors in Meriden, Connecticut.  It was a small operation, though apparently successful, and in 1876 Turner bought Cowlishaw’s share.  Turner had links with the razor strop business of Joseph Rice Torrey (1828-1920), which was based in Worcester, Massachusetts (Pankiewicz, 1986²).   In 1880, after Torrey got the ‘razor fever’ (Turner’s Testimony taken by the Subcommittee on the Tariff, 1888), they launched the J. R. Torrey Razor Co in Worcester.  Turner was the president and Torrey the treasurer.  Turner was the technical expert, whose patents included several designs for safety razors in the 1880s (Krumholz, 1987³; Waits, 2009⁴).   In 1891, Torrey stated that about seventy hands produced about 40 dozen razors a day.  The company supported the Tariff on imports.

Joseph Turner died from heart disease at his home in Worcester on 25 February 1907, aged 69.   The New York Times, 26 February 1907, described him as ‘the first manufacturer of razors in the United States …’  His sons – William, John J., and Joseph H.  – continued the company.  According to Nutt (1919¹), ‘This concern has been for years the largest in the world among the companies manufacturing razors exclusively’.   The Turners became one of the richest families in Worcester, but this wealth was largely dissipated in the twentieth century.  The business ceased trading in 1963.

^1. Nutt, Charles, History of Worcester and Its People (New York, 7 vols, 1919) Vol 3

^2. Pankiewicz, Philip R, New England Cutlery (Gilman, CT, 1986)

^3. Krumholz, P L, A History of Shaving and Razors (Bartonville, IL, 1987)

^4. Waits, R K, Before Gillette: The Quest for a Safe Razor Inventors and Patents, 1762-1901 (2009)