A manufacturer of table and spring knives, John Simkins Bradley Baker was listed in Solly Street in 1868.  He was born in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, in about 1845, and was probably the son of Joseph (a shoemaker) and Eliza Baker.  John first worked in a cutlery warehouse.  Later he described himself as a master cutler.  In the 1870s, he was at Wheeldon Works, Wheeldon Street, and lived in Red Hill.  Baker’s advertisement in the 1879 directory highlighted table cutlery.  By 1883, John Baker & Co was selling electro-plate (a silver mark was registered in 1890).  Baker lived in Brook Place, Brookhill, and then Slinn Street.  In 1885, he bought the Phoenix mark of Horrabin for £52 and the workshops in Wheeldon Street became Phoenix Works.  He also used the ‘MERIT’ (acrobat) and ‘SHEPHERD’ marks.   

Baker partnered John Bartholomew, but when the latter retired in 1887 this ended.  According to Industries of Sheffield (1888), the firm had over 130 hands.  Baker is known to have imported German goods.  In 1888, he was fined £5 under the Merchandise Marks Act for selling German nail scissors, which were displayed on a card below which was Baker’s name and the word ‘Sheffield’.   The case received detailed coverage in the local press, where Baker’s offence aroused the ire of the editor of The Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 17 May 1888.  In 1893, the firm was bankrupt, with debts of £5,951 against assets of £2,823.  Baker later became a commission agent and commercial traveller.  He died, aged 82, at Fir Vale Institution and was buried at Walkley Cemetery on 2 February 1927.  The ‘MERIT’ mark passed to H. G. Long.