Born in Thetford, Suffolk,  in about 1802, Algor specialised in shoe, bread, butchers’, cooks’, glaziers’, farmers’, and artists’ palette knives.  In 1837, he worked in Cross Burgess Street, but by 1841 had moved to 105 Eldon Street.  In 1851, he employed fourteen men.  Algor displayed his products at the League Bazaar in London (1845), the Great Exhibition (1851), where he received an Honourable Mention, and the Irish Industrial Exhibition (1853). 

He seems to have been an educated man and corresponded with literary journals.  His wife, Martha, died from consumption on 26 April 1850, aged 47, and was buried in the General Cemetery.  Algor died on 13 May 1855, aged 53, and his burial in that cemetery was unconsecrated.  The business continued in Eldon Street under his son, John, who in 1861 (aged 32) employed eleven men and one boy.  In the mid-1860s, the address was Bowdon Street, but thereafter John J. Algor Jun. became a steel merchant’s clerk and later a ‘professor’ of music.  No trade mark has been traced.