Norman Crapper (1853-1933) was born at High Bradfield, the son of Ebenezer (a farmer) and his wife, Ruth nee Hallam. In 1871, Norman was boarding in Sheffield at the house of Thomas Banks, a shopkeeper in Infirmary Road. Norman was an apprentice ironmonger. By 1881, he had opened an ironmongery business at the Wicker. An advertisement in a 1898 reprint of Samuel Harrison’s ‘Great Sheffield Flood’ showed that Crapper sold cutlery. It was perhaps unusual to place an advertisement in such a publication, but the collapse of the reservoir dam in 1864 at Bradfield had claimed the lives of a local Crapper family.

The knife in the Hawley Collection is marked ‘NEVA’. This mark was owned by John Clarke & Son, which may have been the maker of the knife. Norman Crapper, of The Hills, Loxley, died on Christmas Day 1933, aged 80. He left £4,549 and was buried at Loxley (Independent) Chapel.  He had sold his ironmongery business in 1910 to Frederick Daniel Clark (1851-1936). The latter had been born at Turville, Buckinghamshire, and had opened an ironmonger’s at Newtown in mid-Wales.  After purchasing Crapper’s shop, Clark moved to Sheffield with his wife Eliza nee Evans (whom he had married at a Welsh Calvinist Methodist Chapel in Newtown). Frederick continued to operate Crapper’s until his death at his home, 82 Kenbourne Road, on 3 January 1936. His estate was resworn at £4,750. Frederick and Eliza (who had died in 1930) were buried at Ecclesall.  Crapper’s continued to trade in the Wicker. By the 1950s, Norman Crapper & Co Ltd had branches on Abbeydale Road and Greenhill Main Road, besides the shop in the Wicker. The business was wound up in 1972.