The Cousins’ family was active in Garden Street from the early 1820s, when first Cousins & Co (silver-plater) and then Hobson & Cousins (Jonathan Hobson and Joseph Cousins) manufactured scissors and Britannia metal ware.  Hobson & Cousins was dissolved in 1825.  By 1828, Joseph Cousins was manufacturing scissors, knives, and Britannia metal in Garden Street.   By the 1830s, he had begun specialising in fine scissors and was later to add tailors’ shears to his product line.

Joseph Cousins and his wife Mary had three sons – John, Joseph, and Edward – and by the end of the 1840s, the business was Joseph Cousins & Sons.   In 1851, the Garden Street business employed 20 men.  At the Great Exhibition (1851), where it was given an Honourable Mention, Cousins displayed:

•    Paper scissors and bankers’ scissors; tailors’ scissors; horse-trimming scissors.
•    Ladies’ cutting-out and fancy scissors.
•    Grape-scissors and flower-gatherers to hold.
•    Gentleman’s budding scissors and flower-gatherers.
•    Gentlemen’s nail-scissors; left-handed scissors.
•    Gardeners’ budding-scissors to hold.

Joseph died on 4 September 1853, aged 67; his wife Mary on 15 August 1858, aged 65.   Their son Joseph Cousins, who lived at Red Hill, died on 4 June 1855, aged 31.  All were buried in the General Cemetery.   The two surviving sons, John and Edward, took over the business, which continued to produce fine scissors and tailors’ shears in Garden Street.  In 1861, it employed ten men, four women and two boys.  By the 1870s, both men lived in the Crookes/Broomhill area.   John told the Census (1881) that the firm employed 20 hands.

Edward Cousins, Spooner Road, died on 25 July 1886, aged 57.  John Cousins, Parker’s Road, died on 17 July 1890, aged 72, leaving £5,141.  They, too, were buried in the General Cemetery.  The business continued in Garden Street, with Mrs Emma Cousins – John’s widow – listed as partner in 1901.  She was later joined by her son, John Cousins (1873-1947).  The Garden Street factory diversified into tinmen’s and painter’s tools, besides scissors.  Emma Cousins, Belton House, Parker’s Road, died on 7 June 1915, leaving £536 to her sons John and Frederick.  Between the Wars, the firm became known as simply ‘Cousins’ and continued to make hand-forged painters’ and plumbers’ tools in Garden Street.  By the 1950s, it operated from John Street and Club Gardens Walk.  It ceased business in about 1970.  No trade mark has been traced.