When John Milner (c.1789-1863), a spring-knife cutler, gave evidence to a Select Committee on Manufactures, Commerce and Shipping (Parliamentary Papers, 1833), he stated: ‘I commenced when I was between nine or ten years of age.  I have been in it about 33 years.  I worked principally as a journeyman, but within the last two or three years I have been manufacturing on my account.   [I employ] only a son of my own, together with three others, who are apprentice with me in the hafting branch’.   He added that he had worked in one of the largest cutlery factories between 1802 and 1810.   According to Leader (1876)¹, Milner was born in Spring Street or its vicinity and by about 1832 lived in a house at the top of Fawcett Street, off St Philip’s Road.  Milner’s early career, though, remains obscure.  In the 1820s and 1830s, several Milners were active in the Edward Street, Garden Street, and Solly Street area.  They included more than one ‘John’ (see Mary Milner).

John Milner was certainly based in St Thomas Street by 1845, from where he produced an exhibition slot-knife that operated on ‘a new and unique principle’ (Sheffield Independent, 3 May 1845).  His speciality was a ‘fly-open’ or switchblade knife (Punchard & Fuller, 2012²).  He apparently moved to Trafalgar Street and then Burgess Street in the 1850s, where he continued to make spring knives.  In 1840, a new ‘John Milner’ enterprise had been launched by John Milner’s son, John (born 13 February 1823).  The first workshop was probably in Chester Lane.  By the 1850s, father and son were living and working nearby, with the John Milner Jun. enterprise located in 1862 at Trafalgar Works in Trafalgar Street.  John Milner Sen., the ‘much respected’ 74-year-old cutlery manufacturer, died in Fitzwilliam Street (where his son lived) on 24 September 1863.  He was buried in the unconsecrated section of the General Cemetery.  The Sheffield Independent, 29 September 1863, described him as ‘exceedingly ingenious, and among many improvements introduced by him was the lock knife, of which he claim[ed] to be inventor’. Leader recalled that: ‘it was said that he was the best spring-knife cutler in the town, and as a debater he was considered unequalled in argument’.  One worthy described Milner as:

the inventor or the improver of the particular kind of knife known as the ‘Fly-open’ knife’, which he continued to make till nearly the close of his life.  He was remarkably fond of reading, and I am told that after a day’s hard work, and an evening spent in the news-room of a public house, he would go home and spend the greater part of the night in reading his favourite books, which were chiefly light literature (Sheffield Independent, 31 May 1873).

Another correspondent confirmed Milner’s skills as a spring-knife maker and pub debater (with inter alia Charles and Matthew Shirtcliffe), but added:

I shall be silent respecting his morals.  But in one thing, I must be outspoken – John Milner, though through life a sceptic, like his associates, in a debate he would take either the positive or the negative side to raise and carry on a discussion; a policy, to my mind, which shows not only a want of rectitude but of principle, as he would talk either in favour or against the Christian religion (William Wragg, Sheffield Independent, 17 June 1873).

His son continued at Trafalgar Works.  In the Census (1871), he was a forty-eight year-old master spring knife cutler, living with his wife in Hodgson Street, and employing two men and an apprentice, Walter Asquith (1852-1925).  The corporate mark was ‘INTRINSIC’, which had been granted in 1848.   John Milner Jun. died on 28 August 1890 and was interred in the same grave as his father (no age was stated in the burial register, but the Milner monument in the General Cemetery – now lying broken on the ground – gives his age, apparently wrongly, as 70).  He left £46.  After the funeral, an ‘ardent admirer’ penned a tribute, which described John Milner Jun. as ‘unsurpassed in practical workmanship by any’ (Sheffield Independent, 1 September 1890).  

Walter Asquith, who had been Milner’s partner during the 1880s, became the owner of Milner’s.   He traded in ‘exclusively the best pen- and pocket-knives, and surgical and anatomical instruments of every description’ (Century’s Progress, 1893).  By 1905, he had moved to Orient Works at 36 Matilda Street.  He had retired by 1911.  He died at 200 Brincliffe Edge on 9 January 1925 and was buried at Ecclesall.

Before the War, Charles Thornhill (1862-1929) took over the business.  He was the son of a stag horn cutter, who became a warehousemen and then manager in a spring knife business (presumably Milner’s).  He lived at Lees Hall Place, Meersbrook, and died on 11 March 1929, aged 67.  He left £1,052.   The firm continued under his sons:  Bernard (1895-1969) and Samuel Charles (1902-1973).  They described themselves as surgical knife and pocket knife manufacturers (Register of England & Wales, 1939).   By 1940, Milner’s had moved to Arundel Street; and in 1946 it was registered as a private limited company, with £1,000 capital.  Bernard Thornhill died on 28 May 1969, leaving £7,703; Samuel Charles on 7 March 1973, leaving £7,482.  Milner’s was wound up in 1974.

^1. Leader, Robert E, Reminiscences of Old Sheffield (Sheffield, 2nd edn 1876)

^2. Punchard, Neal, and Fuller, Dan, Art of the Switchblade: The World’s Concourse Examples (Bloomington, Minnesota, 2012)