Blagden, Hodgson & Co, silversmiths and platers...">
Advertisement from 1919
This enterprise was the successor in 1833 to Blagden, Hodgson & Co, silversmiths and platers, based in Nursery Street. The partners were Charles Hawksworth and John Eyre. Eventually they shed the company’s Sheffield Plate business – Bradbury (1912)1 remarking that by the 1850s a thousand dies had been scrapped – and began electro-plating. After registering their first mark in 1833 (as plate workers, White Rails), Hawksworth and Eyre filed another five marks by 1894. The firm continued to operate from Nursery Street and by the 1850s had a London office at Devereux Court in the Strand. The firm exhibited electro-plated products at the Great Exhibition (1851).
According to a report in The Ironmonger (12 November 1887), ‘Mr Hawksworth was one of the most interesting figures in the commerce and industry of Sheffield. He went into the business when he was fourteen years of age, and he was still actively engaged in it when he was seventy-seven’. However, the partnership had been dissolved in 1869 and the stock sold (Sheffield Independent, 2 November 1869). Charles Hawksworth died at his home Rock Rise, Burngreave Road, on 16 March 1874, aged 78. He was buried in Burngreave cemetery. John Eyre had died at his residence Manor View, Andover Street, on 7 October 1872, aged 75 (and had also been interred in Burngreave). Both left identical fortunes: under £14,000.
A trio of partners then took over: James Kebberling Bembridge, Thomas Hall, and George Woolhouse. (Bembridge was the nephew of Samuel Ebenezer Kebberling and until 1866 had been a partner in the steel trade with Alfred Fieldsend at Sussex Works, Sussex Street.) Woolhouse told the Census in 1871 that the firm employed 34 workers (20 men, 8 women, and 6 boys). In 1873 this partnership was dissolved and Hawksworth, Eyre was registered as a limited company, with a called-up capital of £6,000. James K. Bembridge became the senior partner of the company, which eventually relocated to Rockingham Works, Rockingham Street. Its London office was Bouverie Street, Fleet Street. The business was said to have employed between 75 and 100 workers at its peak, making various silver and electro-plated goods. Its speciality was candlesticks and candelabra, but it also manufactured table cutlery, fish knives, spoons, and silver fruit knives. Bembridge visited the workshops on Saturday 12 November 1892, but on the Monday collapsed and died, aged 59, at his home in Clarkson Street. The funeral was at Baslow. He left £6,388.
The management was taken over by J.T. Smith (chairman), Thomas A. Scott (managing director), and Arthur B. Smith. According to a profile of Scott (Men of the Period, 1896), the firm had a considerable export trade with the USA. Scott was a Freemason and member, like J. F. Atkinson and W. E. Gray (see Joseph Gray), of the Royal Brunswick Lodge. By 1914, the company apparently employed 120 workers. Alfred Crookes Ridge (1877-1952) – the son of Joseph Ridge – had joined the company in 1911, after leaving John Round. He was the senior partner after the First World War. Hawksworth, Eyre was liquidated in 1932, when its dies and goodwill were purchased by Ellis & Co (Birmingham), a subsidiary of Barker Bros (Silversmiths) Ltd, which briefly retained the name.
1. Bradbury, F, History of Old Sheffield Plate (London, 1912)