The Ellin family had settled in Norton by the mid-eighteenth century.  James Ellin (b. 1746) was a husbandman, who had four sons, but abandoned them after the death of his young wife in 1779.  The boys, left in the care of their grandfather, were apprenticed as cutlers.  Thomas Ellin (1771-1845) was the eldest and became the most successful.  According to the records of the Company of Cutlers, he was apprenticed in 1785 and granted his Freedom in 1792 (though 1784 was later counted as the firm’s establishment date).  Leader (1876)¹ commented on the hardship of ‘Tommy’ Ellin’s early years as an apprentice.  Thomas then became a partner with Joseph Oldale, a table knife manufacturer, whose daughter Ann Oldale (1774-5 August 1836) he married.  By 1797, Oldale & Ellin was listed as a manufacturer of table knives in Arundel Street, with the trade mark, ‘OSNABURGH OLDALE’.  After Joseph’s death, Thomas Ellin partnered Oldale’s son, John.

In 1810, the firm rented a water wheel (later known as Ellin or Sylvester Wheel).  However, Ellin was also said to have been the first cutler to use steam-powered machinery and the first to employ circular saws for the cutting of ivory, horn, and bone.  In its day, Ellin’s was amongst the most advanced firms in the cutlery industry.  In 1816, a Prussian traveller (besides noting fancy knives that commemorated the exploits of Russian general Mikhail Kutuzov) observed that:

Most of the knives and forks made here are of the common sort, with green bone handles.  The knives and forks intended for the American market have peculiar handles, made of the points of horns.  The grinding [of] the knives is facilitated by steam engines, which turn the stones; but the steel wheels that cut the bones for the handles in a separate building, are set in motion by water (Spiker, 1820²).

According to a local worthy, Ellin’s brother-in-law was ‘a man of loose habits given to drink’ and the partnership was dissolved (Sheffield Independent, 8 October 1872).  In 1821, the firm was restyled Thomas Ellin & Co. Ellin recruited a new partner – cutler and grinder Edward Ingall.  One of the Ingalls had apparently married one of Joseph Oldale’s daughters.  Under their direction, the business expanded.  Besides Ellin’s Table Knife Works at ‘the foot of Arundel Street’, the firm had forging capacity at Vulcan Works in South Street (where Ellin built a house). 

Thomas Ellin I became Master Cutler in 1833, a position held by his eldest son – Thomas Ellin II (1799-1847) – in 1841.  Ingall relinquished his share in the partnership in 1842.  Thomas Ellin I died at his residence in Brincliffe Edge on 26 December 1845, aged 74, and is commemorated by a plaque in Ecclesall Parish Church (in the churchyard of which are the Ellin graves).  Unfortunately, plans for the smooth succession of Thomas’s three sons – Thomas II, William, and Joseph – suffered setbacks.  Thomas Ellin II died on 23 September 1847, aged 48.  The succession passed to William and Joseph, who lived together in Brincliffe Edge.  However, William died on 12 February 1852, aged 50, in Ashbourne at the residence of his brother-in-law, John Skevington.  Thomas Ellin II’s sons – Arthur Robert Ellin (1841-1908) and Thomas Skevington Ellin (1833-1919) – were young and inexperienced.  Joseph Ellin, therefore, became the chief family partner.

Ellin’s Sylvester Works made a wide range of cutlery, which it sold through offices as far afield as Dublin and New York.  Its display at the Great Exhibition was angled towards trade knives for shoe makers, glaziers, and farriers; besides butchers’ steels and knives.  The exhibit (which won an Honourable Mention) included:

Table knife, with ox-bone handle, and ‘common point’, being the shape used fifty years ago.  The original ‘Sheffield Whittle’.  Oyster knife, Billingsgate pattern.  Leather cutter’s knife, with wooden handle.  Root knife, with cocoa handle (Great Exhibition … Official Descriptive Catalogue, 1851).

The company also made steel.  In 1850, forging, melting, and rolling were switched to Vulcan Steel Works, which was bounded by Hereford Street and Ellin Street.  A crucial role was played by George Barber, who had joined the company as a boy, and whose father apparently had married an Oldale.  Barber became a partner and for some years lived in Sylvester Works.  In 1851, Barber told the Census that he was the ‘master in [the] firm’, employing 180 workers.  By the 1860s, Barber had been joined by A. R. Ellin and T. S. Ellin.  The latter had retired by 1871 (his son founded T. R. Ellin).  After Joseph’s death on 22 August 1867, aged 50, Arthur bought Sylvester Works and grinding wheels (plus two dwelling houses) for £3,000.  Barber died from a stroke on 6 October 1872 at his residence in Monmouth Street, aged 62.  As a Wesleyan Methodist, his burial in the General Cemetery was unconsecrated.  He left under £2,000.  A. R. Ellin assumed full control in about 1876, when Sylvester Works was rebuilt as a three-storied block.  Ellin was joined by long-serving director Joseph Merrill (1851-1940), the son of John Merrill.  Barber’s son, Joseph Ingall Barber, became the traveller, but he died prematurely, aged 32, at Tapton Place, Manchester Road, on 12 April 1874 (his unconsecrated burial was in the General Cemetery).

In 1881, about 150 workers were employed in the manufacture of table cutlery, pen and pocket knives, Bowies, hunting, palette, butchers’, and plumbers’ knives.  Canada became an important overseas market, which was cultivated by the bi-annual visits of Fred Barber, who was George Barber’s younger son.  Fred Barber’s wife, Hannah, died in Sheffield in 1885, aged 35, and on a visit to Toronto three years later Barber re-married.  His bride was Mrs ‘Polly’ Bredin, who (apparently unknown to Barber) was already married.  On 16 November 1888, soon after the bigamous ceremony, Barber shot himself with a revolver at Niagara Falls.  He was buried in St James’s cemetery, Toronto.  The lurid details and the later arrest of ‘Pretty Polly’ were reported at length in The Sheffield Independent, 5 December 1888.

In 1901, A. R. Ellin became Master Cutler – the first time a third member of the same family had become Master.  In 1907, Ellin’s became a private limited company (capital £20,000), registered a silver mark, and acquired Colquhoun & Cadman and Fawsitt.  Other acquisitions were the marks of James Barber and James Barlow & Sons..  A. R. Ellin probably retired.  He died from heart disease at Kingfield Road, Sharrow, on 22 November 1908, aged 68.  He left £23,653 and was buried in Ecclesall.  Thomas Skevington Ellin died on 11 February 1919, aged 86, leaving £37,833.

Ellin’s marks were a sailing ship (‘CUTTER’, granted to Joseph Ellin in 1849); ‘VULCAN’ at his forge; ‘SYLVESTER & CO’; ‘MAPLE LEAF’; and ‘LACROSSE’.  In 1915, Ellin’s was one of the first to register a stainless trade mark (‘VULCAN STAINPROOF’).  By 1919, Ellin had also acquired the marks of Edward Barber, Longley & Hawksworth, John Shaw, George Woodhead & Sons, Fischer Bros.  The last family member in the firm, Arthur William Ellin (1877-1961) – the son of A. R. Ellin – retired in 1934.  He died on 13 November 1961, aged 84, leaving £23,046.  J. W. Haigh was briefly listed as director (1933), but Joseph Elliot & Sons soon took over the factory and the Ellin marks.  The Ellin company was formally dissolved in 1980.  An Ellin genealogy was published by Skevington (1916)³. 

^1. Leader, Robert E, Reminiscences of Old Sheffield (Sheffield, 2nd edn 1876)

^2. Spiker, Samuel H, Travels Through England, Wales, and Scotland in the Year 1816 (London, 1820)

^3. Skevington, Thomas William, Ellin Family and Connections (Bradford, 1916)