Pleasance & Beal was a merger in 1930 of two city centre Sheffield jewellers.  Beal’s was the better known. It had been launched in 1848 by Michael Beal (1810-1891), who eventually traded at Market Place. Beal was notable for his public service (he served as Alderman) and for the circumstances of his death: he and his wife died within three days of each other from influenza (Evening Telegraph & Star, 7 May 1891).  Their son, William Robert Beal (1855-1892), a watchmaker, died in Australia in the following year. The business passed to William Robert’s sister, Elizabeth Hypatia (1842-1922), who was married to artist Joseph Wrightson McIntyre. She continued to run the shop with the help of manageress, Ada Dodworth Renton (1874-1954).  After Elizabeth died in 1922, the executors sold the business to Mrs Renton. Beal’s was registered as a private limited company in 1923, with £5,000 capital.

Pleasance’s watch and jewellery shop involved two brothers:  Charles Ross Pleasance (1867-1914) and Ernest Saville Pleasance (1869-1934), who were the sons of a Bristol jeweller. By 1901, Pleasance’s had a shop at 76 Pinstone Street, before moving to 60 Fargate.  After the elder brother’s death in 1914, the business was owned by Ernest Saville.  He operated as Pleasance & Son, 56 Fargate.  He had two sons, Vincent Ross (1896-1970) and Reginald Ernest (1897-1970).  It was Vincent who joined the Fargate business; Reginald was a physician and surgeon.

An advertisement for Pleasance & Beal, 56 Fargate (‘late Market Place’) appeared in The Sheffield Daily Independent, 13 December 1930. The firm evidently sold stainless table cutlery, which would have been made locally. Pleasance & Beal also offered cut glass, pewter, electro-plate, watches, clocks, and bought old gold and silver. Under the headline, ‘Gold Turns into Hard Cash’, it was reported that the firm’s ‘spacious premises … have been turned into a huge receiving office where a small army of assistants are busily engaged in exchanging any kind of gold for ready cash’ (Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 25 February 1932). The partners in Pleasance & Beal are unknown, but later in 1932 the business began trading under a new name: R. Worthmore Ltd (Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 14 September 1932). The new proprietors, though unidentified, were said to be the same directors as formerly. The intention was to open a chain of shops selling only British goods, including cutlery products made in Sheffield. Towards the end of 1932, the partners felt obliged to refute a suggestion that it was associated with any manufacturer in Sheffield or elsewhere and added: ‘Large purchases and big turnover enable us to offer our goods to the public at these low prices’ (Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 26 November 1932).  In 1933, R. Worthmore Ltd was wound up at Newcastle upon Tyne by its chairman Crossley Cooke, who was a diamond merchant and jeweller and founder of Northern Goldsmiths Co.