This was one of Sheffield’s largest silver and electro-plate firms by the 1890s.  It can be traced to Henry Wilkinson, Low Street.   The business was developed by John Roberts (17 March 1798-1888), a silversmith and plater, who was Wilkinson’s son-in-law.  Wilkinson & Roberts registered a silver mark in 1831 at Low Street, but the partnership ended in 1836 (when Roberts continued).  His marriage did not produce a son:  instead, he virtually adopted Ebenezer Hall (1820-1911), who was born on 18 November 1820 in Middleton, Derbyshire.  Ebenezer was the son of Gilbert Hall, a Derbyshire lead miner, and his wife, Elizabeth (Handley¹ and Lacey-Hatton², n. d., typescripts).   Hall became an apprentice in 1836 and became Roberts’ partner in Roberts & Hall in 1847.   Roberts contributed £2,750 capital; Hall £100.   The firm occupied Shrewsbury Works, 53 Broad Street (formerly Henry Dawson Wilkinson). 

In 1852, Roberts & Hall merged with Martin Bros & Naylor.  Richard Martin joined the partners.   In 1854, the firm became Martin, Hall & Co and registered a silver mark from Broad Street and Pepper Alley, Fargate.  Roberts had retired in 1858, leaving Richard Martin, Ebenezer Hall, and the latter’s brother, Joshua Hall (1823-1861), as partners.  Roberts owned Abbeydale Villa and Park in Dore; he also built and endowed St John’s Church, Abbeydale.  He died on 11 April 1888, aged 90, leaving £19,878.  His burial was at the General Cemetery.
No manuscript records have survived relating to Martin, Hall & Co’s business history, though it was featured regularly in the press, exhibition catalogues, and government reports.  The firm exhibited electro- and silver-plated cutlery at the Great Exhibition (1851) and International Exhibition in London (1862).  At the latter, its prize-winning exhibits included a:

massive solid silver flagon, with a design on one side representing a gathering of all nations, and the Exhibition building in the background, while on the other are allegorical figures of Europe, Asia, Africas, and America, and other minor details, and the whole producing a very elegant and massive piece of plate.  There is also a very large cross, with a military design, also in solid silver, the workmanship of which cannot be excelled.  The other goods consist of tea and coffee services, dinner services, cake baskets, cruet frames, and a multitude of those little elegant table ornaments that so enhance the appearance of a sumptuous repast (Sheffield Independent, 26 April 1862).  

Most of these products involved manual labour and craft work.  It appears, though, that Ebenezer tried to mechanise some aspects of production.  In 1857, he registered (alongside Richard Martin and Joshua Hall) a patent for steam hammers.  In 1871, he took out a patent in his own name for an ‘improvement’ in harnessing hydraulic power to shape metal objects, such as teapots.  However, working conditions at his factory remained arduous and sometimes dangerous.  A government commissioner, charged with investigating child labour visited Shrewsbury Works in the early 1860s (White, 1865³).   He found that the workshops and premises had ‘a clean and cheerful look, far more so than is to be found in other places’.  He was told that ‘any girls who like can wash and change and go home quite clean’.   Shafts and band were safely fenced for them, but only partially so for men and boys.  Since the boys wore aprons, this was a potential hazard.   Two teenagers offered the following testimony:

George Henry Harley (13):  ‘Polish with rouge at a steam lathe.  Work from 7 a.m.  till 8 p.m., with two hours for meals … There is a place where I can wash my hands’.

Elizabeth Hay (17): ‘Polish plate with my hand.  Come at 7 a.m.  and leave at 7.30 p.m..  Some of them stay later sometimes to finish, viz., till 9.30 or 10 p.m; but I have never stayed later than 9.  Went to this sort of work first when 13'.

In 1865, Martin, Hall & Co became the first Sheffield electro-plate firm to convert to limited liability, with an authorized capital of £150,000, of which £100,000 was called up within five years.   Apparently, the owners received £30,000 for the business.  There was no public share issue.  Richard Martin and Ebenezer Hall were joint-managing directors, with solicitor Bernard Wake as chairman.   (Wake was also chairman of George Wostenholm & Son in 1875.)  Ebenezer’s brother, Joshua, died on 12 June 1861, aged 38, after a protracted illness (tuberculosis).  Another of Ebenezer’s brothers – Joseph (1827-1905) – became a partner.  Martin managed the London business, while Hall handled the Sheffield operations and travelled extensively.   A dividend of ten percent was guaranteed for five years, but that was easily surpassed.  Martin, Hall’s dividends averaged 15 per cent a year in its first eleven years as a limited company.  

The company lost Richard Martin, who died in London of consumption on 4 April 1875, aged 54.   He left under £80,000 (about £6½m at current prices).   However, the company maintained its profits.  Ebenezer Hall sought new markets in Australia, where in 1879 the firm appointed an agency at Sydney.  In the following year, the firm garnered a prize medal at the Sydney Exhibition.  In 1887, the value of Martin, Hall’s £100,000 shares had increased to £131,250.  By 1889, the directors highlighted that they had paid out average dividends of ten per cent over 23 years, and still had a reserve of £10,000.

In 1886, Ebenezer told the board that he was contemplating retirement.  It was agreed that  Peter Wragg (1832-1894) and Ebenezer Hall Jun. (1849-1934) should be appointed to relieve him of heavy duties.  The latter was Ebenezer Sen.’s nephew, whose father, John – Ebenezer Sen.’s brother – was also from Middleton and worked as a silversmith at Broad Street.  Ebenezer Jun.  had worked at the firm as a departmental manager.  Wragg was another Middleton recruit, who had joined Martin, Hall in 1847 and was appointed secretary in 1866.  He became managing director in 1889.  Wragg died on 14 January 1894, leaving effects of £5,718.   His unconsecrated burial was at the General Cemetery.  His obituaries were relatively lengthy, but only because he was a prominent Wesleyan Methodist  (Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 15 January 1894).  Ebenezer Hall Jun. became managing director;  and Alfred Ernest Maxwell (1852-1911), a solicitor, and Frederick William Sanders (1845-1938) were appointed directors.

Ebenezer Hall served on the boards of several coal, steel, and banking companies and became a rich man.  At first he lived with Roberts at Abbeydale Villa [Hall] in Dore, but by the late 1870s had bought these properties for himself and his wife Sarah (the daughter of George Wilkinson, who was probably the son of Henry, above).  Aged seventy, Ebenezer considered himself retired.  He told the Census in 1891 that he was a ‘magistrate, not in business’.  However,  Bernard Wake died in that year and Ebenezer Hall Sen. decided to fill the role of chairman.   A history of the Hall family (Newall, 2006⁴) has described Ebenezer travelling into Sheffield each day by train from Dore & Totley station until at least 1902, returning each evening where his carriage awaited to take him back to Abbeydale Hall.

With old Ebenezer fronting the annual meeting, all looked well.  According to a vanity publication, Men of the Period  (1896), Shrewsbury Works made ‘a speciality of high-class solid silver goods, and, probably, no house in the trade holds a larger stock than theirs’.  It made silver-plated knives of every description for table and household use.  Further silver marks had been registered in 1863 and 1880.  Besides silver goods, the firm also marketed white metal flatware items, such as spoons and forks.  The company had several trade names and marks, including ‘ARGENTUM’, ‘MARTINOID’, ‘MARTINIUM’ and ‘MARTIN’ (the latter below the picture of a bird).   Table knives and cased sets of carvers – with best cast steel or double shear blades – appeared in its catalogues.

The workforce was supposedly 400 to 500 at the turn of the century – figures that are difficult to verify.  But certainly Martin, Hall was a leading employer.  The company acquired workshops in Ludgate Hill, Birmingham, for light silver goods and ornamental products.  The firm’s products were distributed from a London showroom at Audrey House, Ely Place, Holborn; a Glasgow warehouse; and an agency in Sydney, Australia.   But in other respects, the company was aging alongside its chairman.  It paid steady (though no longer spectacular) dividends of 5 per cent each year during the 1890s.  But there was little investment in new plant, despite increasing competition both at home and overseas.  By 1901, the firm had become unprofitable and the dividend had disappeared.

Ebenezer Hall retired completely, after over sixty years in the business.  He was replaced as chairman by A. E. Maxfield.  Ebenezer Jun. was now in a sanatorium, because ‘he was rather unstable and drank excessively’ (Newall, 2006⁴).   In 1903, after losses had exceeded £30,000 a year, a new managing director was appointed.  This was Harry Wilkins (1862-1930), who was the son of John Wilkins.   He found that Martin, Hall was burdened by depreciated stock, which though ‘originally fashionable and up-to-date had passed out of fashion and become unsaleable’ (Sheffield Independent, 2 August 1905).  In that year, the directors drastically cut the capital of the business from £150,000 to £117,000.   To underline the passing of the old guard, Ebenezer’s brother and former director, Joseph, died on 2 November 1905.

In 1910, after an eight-year gap, the dividend was restored, but only to 2½ per cent.  As the firm’s glories faded, Ebenezer Hall died at Abbeydale Hall on 28 June 1911, aged 90.  The obituary of ‘Abbeydale’s Grand Old Man’ filled two columns in The Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 29 June 1911.  He was buried in the General Cemetery, where his massive tomb can still be seen in the unconsecrated section.  He left £194,632 gross (about £16m at current prices) and a detailed will with many charitable bequests.  The company chairman and one of his executors, A. E. Maxfield, died later in the same year (and was replaced by another solicitor, Philip K. Wake).  

The firm’s problems continued.  In 1913, net profit was a measly £29.   The company was burdened with debt, losses in Canada, and write-offs of stock in Birmingham.  A solution was sought in a share-splitting scheme in which the nominal capital of £117,000 (£93,600 paid up) was raised to £130,000 (Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 1 July 1913).  But the First World War ruined any chance of a recovery.  Martin, Hall was hit by the decline of the silver and plated goods market, labour and materials shortages, disruption to the Colonial trade, and a serious fire at the Birmingham factory.  In 1919, the firm emerged from the War barely profitable.  In order to to cope with renewed demand, an overhaul of plant and machinery was launched and additional freehold premises were purchased in Broad Street and Blast Lane.  

There was a flicker of optimism in the post-war boom, when the return of dividend payments induced one shareholder to comment hopefully (and perhaps sarcastically) that, ‘it was very gratifying to learn that a dividend was to be paid on the ordinary shares.  He said that they had been starving in the wilderness a long time and had at last gone through the frontier into the land of Goschen – the land flowing with milk and honey – and hoped that they would take up their residence there’ (Sheffield Independent, 27 April 1920).  Alas, the end of the post-war boom, combined with the costs of installing motor power at Sheffield and Birmingham, forced another capital reconstruction in 1921.

In 1924, Sam Gladwin bid successfully for the company by offering an exchange of preference shares (nominally valued at £41,250) for Martin, Hall’s share capital (valued at £125,000).   Gladwin installed his own directors, but they did little to turn the tide.  In 1925, after a loss of £45,000, the Birmingham factory was closed and Martin, Hall’s capital was reduced from £130,000 to £85,000.  Gladwin ended his involvement in 1926 and sold his Martin, Hall shares.  By the end of the decade, the company was bankrupt.  It was liquidated in 1933 and Shrewsbury Works was occupied by Frank Cobb.  The factory building survived until the end of the 1990s, when the area was obliterated by motorways, apartments, and offices. 

Note that further information about Ebenezer Hall can be found on the Totley History Group website.

^1. Handley, J, ‘The Grand Old Man of Abbeydale: Ebenezer Hall JP’, nd typescript in SCLLS

^2. Lacey-Hatton, J, ‘Ebenezer Hall JP’, nd, typescript in SCLLS

^3. White, J. E., Fourth Report of the Children’s Employment Commission (London, 1865)

^4. Newall, Chris E., Base Lead and Shining Silver:  The Hall Family of Middleton-by-Wirksworth and Sheffield 1700-1940 (London, 2006)