Paradise Square, with its Georgian buildings, is now the address of solicitors and accountants.  But the Square once housed  manufacturers and merchants.  One of them was John Heiffor, who according to an advertisement began trading in razors in 1798.  He was baptised on 25 February 1780, the son of James Heiffor – a barber in Westbar Green – and his wife, Mary.  James apparently died in 1792, leaving ‘Widow Heiffor’ as a hairdresser in Westbar.  John was listed in Scotland Street after 1815 as a maker of razors and a ‘hair dresser and perfumer’.  By 1837, he was concentrating on razors and ‘concavo-lated table steel’.  In the 1840s, his address as a razor manufacturer was Workhouse Croft (now Paradise Street).

John Heiffor died on 27 June 1849, aged 69, and was buried in St Paul’s churchyard.  The business had moved to 3 Paradise Square (the building still stands).  John’s son, Thomas Heiffor (1820-1886), became the owner.  The firm’s speciality remained hollow-ground razors, though it was also listed as a cutlery manufacturer.  Its ‘Army Razors’ sold for about a shilling each (5p) in the 1850s (the articles approved by various government and military departments).  Apparently, Thomas attempted to mechanise razor production by patenting in 1856 a method of rolling steel in concave or hollow-form strips.  In 1881, Thomas  employed 33 men and a woman.  He lived at Taptonville and died there on 8 October 1886, aged 66.  His estate was £7,050 and he left a selection of his pictures to the town.  He was a ‘Tory of the old school’, who was interred at Pitsmoor Church (Sheffield Independent, 12 October 1886). 

Thomas never married and his executor (and business successor) was his manager and nephew, James Hill.  The latter was the son of James Hill, a type founder, and Martha née Heiffor (Thomas’s sister).  James Hill operated the firm until his death on 10 December 1911 at 81 Watson Road, Broomhill.  He was aged 71 and had suffered a seizure.  A Churchman and Conservative, he was buried in Burngreave, leaving £1,952.  Heiffor’s advertised regularly in directories before the First World War.  In the twentieth century, the firm became renowned for its microtomes, such as the ‘Heiffor knife’ for pathologists.  Trade marks included *JH*, the word ‘MODEL’, a chariot and horses, and a distinctive symbol of loops and commas.  Harold Hill, James’s son, operated the business until his death on 17 February 1951, aged 77.  He left £18,855.