Hides presented itself as one of the oldest cutlery firms in Sheffield.  According to Sheffield and Rotherham Up-to-Date (1897), a seventh generation of the family gave it a ‘hereditary connection … unparalleled in the annals of the trade’.  Certainly, William Hides had been Master Cutler in 1750, but a direct linkage (if any) is unconfirmed.  None of the Hides in the firm appear to have become Freemen of the Company of Cutlers.  The firm itself claimed establishment dates of 1709 or 1790 (Sheffield Independent, 1 April 1895).

This branch of the family appeared in a directory in 1822, when Robert Hides (bapt.  1 April 1787-1843) was a haft presser in Orchard Street.  He was the son of Matthew, a razor smith, and Ann.  By the mid-1820s, Robert Hides was in partnership with Mary Timm (with whom a family connection developed) as a manufacturer of table knives.  (Possibly, the original partnership had involved John Timm, who manufactured table knives in Lee Croft.  Timm died in 1824, aged 36.)  However, the arrangement with Mary Timm was dissolved in 1826.  Hides next launched a partnership to manufacture table knives with John Townsend (see Francis Townsend) in Hollis Croft.  When Hides & Townsend ended in 1832, Robert began trading alone in Hollis Croft as a table, shoe, and butchers’ knife manufacturer, and horn presser.  He lived in Red Hill.  In January 1843, he sickened with bronchitis and drew up his will.  He died on 10 February 1843, aged 56, and was buried in St George’s churchyard, Portobello (where his gravestone is one of the few remaining).  He left £3,000 to his widow, Susannah, and ten children. 

His sons, George Hides (1815-1887) and Robert Timm Hides (1819-1875), purchased the business, which became George & Robert Hides.  However, a feud festered over the will.  In 1859, Hides’ other sons took their grievances to court, because of their father’s alleged ‘mental imbecility’.  The case was thrown out by the jury and the judge remarked that it was the worst display of the dark side of human nature he had ever seen (Newcastle Courant, 4 February 1859).  When Robert’s wife, Susannah, died on 29 November 1861, aged 75 (leaving under £100), the legal dispute flared up again (Sheffield Independent, 28, 29 March 1862).

George and Robert Hides continued the Hollis Croft business until the 1860s.  They lived in Birkendale View, Crookesmoor.  In 1866, they ended their partnership, with George taking the ‘Excelsior Trade’ at Hollis Works and Robert the ‘London and District Trade’ at adjoining workshops.  George’s business became the more dominant, with about fifty workers in the early 1870s.  Hollis Works occupied a red-brick building stretching from the foot of Hollis Croft across to White Croft.  It was a typical cutlery ‘Works’, covering 600 square yards, with a frontage of fifty yards or so, a gateway to a small central courtyard, and three or four storeys housing a mixture of trades and outworkers. 

The factory had an atrocious accident record.  In 1865, an inquest censured George Hides after an 11-year-old girl had died after becoming entangled in unguarded engine shafting (Sheffield Independent, 4 February 1865).  On 22 December 1874, a massive boiler explosion wrecked Hollis Works and scalded to death two teenage boys (Sheffield Independent, 23, 26 December 1874).  When it emerged that Hides had known for months that the boiler was faulty, the inquest jury returned a verdict of manslaughter (Sheffield Independent 14, 30 January 1875). Incredibly, within days another teenager – 19-year-old Samuel Morley – died while changing a wheel band on the replacement steam engine (Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 20 February 1875).  The unfortunately-named local surgeon, Mr Reckless, was summoned, but could do nothing.  Hides stated that he thought the dead boy was aged 22.  He was later acquitted at Leeds Assizes of manslaughter for the boiler explosion (Sheffield Independent, 10 April 1875). 

Robert Timm Hides, Ashland Road, Nether Edge, died on 12 August 1875 and was buried in Fulwood.  He was aged 55 and left under £5,000.  His brother George died on 1 May 1887, aged 71, at Howard Cottage, Birkendale.  He had become wealthy and had numerous investments in local engineering and utility companies, besides owning nearly a dozen houses in Harvest Lane and Upperthorpe (Sheffield Independent, 7 June 1887).  He left £29,576.  By his wife Eliza Fearn (the daughter of William Fearn of Storrs, whom he had married in 1836), George had three sons.  One – named George – died in September 1870, aged 23, from lockjaw after accidentally pricking his wrist with a needle (Sheffield Independent, 10 September 1870).  George’s eldest son, Henry Timm Hides became a pawnbroker and died on 12 July 1888, aged 50 (he was buried in Burngreave, leaving £14,273).  His other son – William Fearn Hides (1856-1946) – succeeded to the business.

In the late nineteenth century, George Hides & Son produced table and spring cutlery, razors, palette, putty and oyster knives.  Steels and knives for butchers were a speciality and for these products and its table cutlery the firm apparently used best shear steel.  The corporate mark was ‘EXCELSIOR’, which was granted to Hides in 1849.  The firm sold a variety of pocket knives, such as a ‘cycle-knife’, which was introduced in the 1890s: 1½ ounces in weight, it included a tyre wrench.  Hides exported to the Colonies and its trade with South Africa was said to be increasing in the 1890s.  It employed about fifty hands in the late 1880s, and possibly nearly a hundred by 1900.  William F. Hides began marketing electro-plate and in 1906 registered a silver mark.  In 1898, he also registered from Hollis Works a silver mark under the name of London maker James & Charles Tidmarsh.  He headed the business through the First World War.  He served as secretary of the Sheffield District Holloway Friendly Society. 

By 1925, the firm had become W. F. Hides & Son after William Weber Hides ((1891-1970), the son of William Fearn Hides, joined the business.  The firm produced Firth’s stainless table cutlery, marked ‘ECHO’ (the old mark of James Barlow & Sons).  In 1930, W.  F.  Hides advertised ‘DURANTE VITA’ silver and electro-plated cutlery.  In 1939, William Fearn Hides was still a cutler and silversmith, living at Cobden View Road (Register of England & Wales, 1939).  But his son had moved to Birmingham to work as a surveyors’ draughtsman.  William Fearn Hides, Crookesmoor Road, died on 14 November 1946, aged 90.  He left £2,899 to his spinster daughter, Joyce.  The company ceased trading during the Second World War.  I. & J. Barber apparently acquired the ‘EXCELSIOR’ mark, though later it was bought by Wostenholm, which presumably wished to extinguish a look-alike mark.