A manufacturer of surgical instruments, Francis Cluley (1777-1839) was born in London and baptised at St Martin-in-the-Fields.  He was the son of Francis, a wire worker, and his wife, Elizabeth.  He apparently worked for the London surgical instrument maker, Savigny.  Cluley started business in Sheffield in 1800 – the year he married Sarah née Carlton at the parish church.   Sheffield Local Register, 20 June 1810, noted that a ‘humane society for the recovery of persons apparently dead’ had been formed by F. Cluley, with the directors of the Sheffield Fire Office and the governors of the local Infirmary.  By about 1813, he was working in Westbar, next to the Old Tankard pub.   In Gell’s Directory of Sheffield (1825), Cluley’s advertisement gave his address as ‘nearly opposite the Music Hall’ in Surrey Street, where he made surgeons’ instruments, elastic steel trusses, and ‘razors and lancets of the finest quality’.  In that year, his ‘improved’ lithotomy forceps were awarded the Vulcan gold medal by the Royal Society of Arts.  A pocket set of surgeon’s instruments by Cluley is illustrated in Smith’s Key (Smith, 1975¹).   His trade mark was a shield device, granted in 1831.  

In 1838, Cluley announced that he was transferring the business to Thomas Ellis, his ‘confidential assistant’ (Ellis, Son & Paramore).   Cluley died at his residence in Carver Street on 25 February 1839 (aged 61) from liver disease.  He had become the Registrar of Births, Marriages, and Deaths, but an obituary noted that he had been ‘for many years an eminent surgeons’ instrument maker’ (Sheffield Independent, 2 March 1839).  He was buried in the General Cemetery.  He had no children and his will directed that his property should be used to support ‘Old Decayed Tradesmen’ in Sheffield.  However, one of the executors, Jeremiah Winks, embezzled most of the money (about £700) and reduced Cluley’s widow, Sarah, and their daughter to penury.  A subscription for them was launched by Cluley’s friends (Sheffield Independent, 30 October 1841).  Sarah was interred in the same grave as her husband in 1848.  

^1. Smith, J, Explanation or Key, to the Various Manufactories of Sheffield, with Engravings of Each Article  Ed J S Kebabien (Vermont, 1975)