When Samuel Frith died ‘suddenly’ on 15 December 1839, aged 60, he was the landlord at the Barrack Tavern, Penistone Road.  His earlier career had been as a fine pen knife manufacturer.  He was baptised in Sheffield on 25 June 1779, the son of Micah and Elizabeth Frith.   Micah was the son of William (a mason at Fairfield, north Yorkshire) and was apprenticed to a cutler in Upper Hallam.  Micah became a silversmith and in the early 1790s apprenticed his son, Samuel, to a succession of knife makers – though Samuel, like his father, never became a Freeman (Leader, 1905-06¹).

In 1818, Samuel was listed as a pen and pocket-knife maker at Bridgehouses.  By 1821, he was combining this with flour dealing at Spring Street.  At about that time, he formed a partnership with Robert Hallam (qv) to manufacture pen knives.  Frith & Hallam was located at Green Lane, but it was dissolved in 1823.  Samuel continued to trade at Smithfield (1825) and at ‘back of the Royal Oak’, Allen Street (1828).   By 1833, Samuel was running the Barrack Tavern.  This public house was popular with the Company of Cutlers and had been operated by John Saynor.  In 1829, Saynor had announced that he was withdrawing from the business (due to his wife’s death) and Samuel succeeded him.  Samuel’s brief obituaries made no mention of his earlier work as a cutler, but he was remembered as a ‘proficient leader of the choir at Queen Street Chapel’.  His ‘relict’, Elizabeth, died at Netherthorpe in 1862.  Their remains lie in the General Cemetery.

^1. Leader, R E, History of the Company of Cutlers in Hallamshire in the County of York (Sheffield, 1905-6)