At the Great Exhibition in 1851, Charles Holmes, a Sheffield ‘designer and manufacturer’, displayed table knives and a ‘new registered bolster’.  Charles can be identified from the 1851 Census as a 39 year-old table knife manufacturer, living with his wife, Hannah, in Gloucester Street.  In the subsequent two decades, his workshop was in Burgess Street, Princess Street, West Street, and Milton Street.  His business was modest – employing only four workers in 1871 – and Holmes worked briefly as a tobacconist.  Hannah died in 1876, aged 66, and Charles moved in with the family of his married daughter.  His cutlery business no longer appeared in directories and he died in Ecclesall Union (workhouse) on 6 July 1889, aged 77.  The burials (unconsecrated) of Charles and Hannah were in the General Cemetery.