William Wolstenholme (1819-1876) was the son of Thomas (1787-1856) and Lydia née Goslin (1795-1857).  Thomas was a grocer, who was later a baker and confectioner at West Street.  The family gravestone is at Christ Church, Heeley.  William first appeared in a Sheffield directory in 1854 as dealer in ivory and horn handles at Duke’s Works, Rockingham Lane.  He lived at Shirebrook, Heeley.  By 1856, he had relocated his business to Burgess Street.  In 1861, he told the Census that he employed four men, two boys, and a girl.  He later described himself as an ivory, pearl, and horn haft and scale cutter, and pencil knife manufacturer.  

In 1873, he announced his retirement with a sale of his stock of ivory handles and scales, the ‘largest and best ever offered in Sheffield’ (Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 9 Aug 1873).   A sale of his other stock and working tools followed, including 300 gross of pen and pocket blades, ground and unground; springs, etc.; [and] a large assortment of finished pencil knives’ (Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 7 October 1873).   William Wolstenholme died at his residence, Auburn Villa, Kent Road, Heeley, on 12 October 1876, aged 57.  He left under £2,000 and was buried at Christ Church, Heeley, where his tomb is near the entrance to the churchyard.  

In 1840, William Wolstenholme had married Miss Mary Greenwood.  Their children included William Bradwell Wolstenholme (1842-1910) and Frederick Verdon Wolstenholme (1858-1908).  After his father’s death, William Bradwell launched his own business as an ivory handle and razor scale cutter and dealer at 64-66 Holly Street.  In about 1886, he joined forces with William White, a pearl cutter, in William White & Co at Holly Street, but this was dissolved in 1890.  (White was bankrupt in 1903.) By 1891, the business was styled W. B. and F. V. Wolstenholme, a dealer in tortoiseshell and pearl handles and scales, Holly Street.   This arrangement ended in 1895, when the brothers began operating separately at Holly Street in adjacent workshops: Frederick dealing in pearl and tortoiseshell and William cutting and dealing in ivory.  

In 1867, William Bradwell had married Jane Eliza Birks (1846-1879).  Their sons, Francis Fanshaw Wolstenholme (1868-1936) William Augustus Wolstenholme (1871-1928), joined the family business.  William Augustus was trained for the German department of the business and in Solingen was a companion of Thornton Turner (see Rawson & Turner).  F. V. Wolstenholme died at The Poplar Hydro, Matlock, on 18 August 1908.  He was buried at Ecclesall, leaving £609.  William Bradwell died two years later on 8 October 1910, aged 68, at Belle Vue Street, Filey.  No probate was recorded and his burial is untraced.

The Holly Street business continued to trade as W. B. Wolstenholme & Co under Francis Fanshaw.  His younger brother, William Augustus, left Sheffield to live in Buffalo, New York, where he continued to work as an ivory cutter.  He married Lucy Dill at Buffalo in 1903.  He died suddenly at Buffalo on 12 March 1928 and was buried at Forest Lawn Cemetery.

At the end of the First World War, W. B. Wolstenholme was registered as a private limited company.  Besides the Holly Street workshops, the firm operated a factory in Thirwell Road, a residential street in Heeley.  In 1930, the firm relocated its central workshops from Holly Street to 71 Carver Street.  It had incorporated Edwin Marsden & Sons, an ivory cutter in Division Street.  As an ivory merchant, Wolstenholme’s supplied handles for table cutlery, pocket knives, and also made pianoforte keys.  Its advertisements featured an elephant.  In 1932, it bought a huge tusk (over ten feet in length), which had been displayed at the entrance to Joseph Rodgers & Sons.  This was not used, but transferred to the British Museum.  The firm now relied heavily on celluloid and other ivory substitutes.  These were highly flammable.  On one occasion, the fire brigade was called out to extinguish a celluloid fire at the two-storey Thirwell Road premises.  Twelve girls were reported to have fled the fire (Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 14 October 1931).  

Francis died at 66 Thirwell Road on 8 April 1936.  An obituary noted that he was a founder of Sheffield Rifle Club, though it contained little about his business career.  However, it did state that his grandfather had brought the first circular saw to Sheffield from the USA for ivory cutting (Sheffield Daily Independent, 11 April 1936).  He was buried at Abbey Lane Cemetery, leaving £1,098.   His widow, Ann Eliza née Hanson, continued to live at Thirwell Road, where the business passed to their sons, John ‘Jack’ Charles (1901-1940) and Francis Donald (1900-1965).  The Register of England & Wales (1939) listed the family at 66 Thirwell Road: John (an ivory merchant), Donald (a celluloid store keeper), Gladys (Donald’s wife), and their daughter, Vera (a shop assistant).  The factory at Thirwell Road continued to operate until the moonlit night of 12 December 1940, when Heeley was hit during the Sheffield Blitz.   A resident recalled:

One of the bombs was a direct hit on the celluloid factory at the top of Thirwell Road.  The Wolstenholmes owned this and the parents had gone out for the evening, leaving their twenty-one year old daughter, Vera, to look after her grandmother.  The wardens had been several times to ask them to go into the communal shelter, but the old woman would not budge so Vera stayed with her.  Sadly both were killed and the only thing found was Vera’s wrist with her gold watch (her 21st birthday present) still keeping perfect time (Heeley History Workshop, 2010).

Official records listed the casualties as: Ann Eliza (73), Jack (39), and Vera Kathleen (20).  Their remains lie in the family grave at Abbey Lane Cemetery.