Hutton's building on West Street. © Geoffrey Tweedale 2013
Hutton’s, a silversmiths, began in Birmingham in 1800 under William Hutton (1774-2 May 1842). His son, William Carr Hutton (1803-1865), moved to Sheffield in 1832 to begin the manufacture of silver-plated steel products and ‘British Plate’ (an alloy of copper, zinc and nickel, known as German or nickel silver, and used for spoons and forks). Hutton was at Eyre Street until 1833, when he moved to ‘back of’ 35 Pinstone Street (Sheffield Independent, 2 February 1833). Hutton was also an agent for Gillott’s steel pens. The registration of a silver mark (the first of several) in 1836 marked a move to South Street, Moor. The business had four small rooms, one of which was the warehouse; the workforce was about a dozen, including John Round. By 1841, Hutton was at Surrey Street, where spoon and fork manufacture was transferred from Birmingham. In 1843, Hutton’s became the second Sheffield licensee of Elkington’s electro-plate process (the day after John Harrison). In 1845, premises were occupied in High Street. Hutton’s advertised regularly in directories as ‘platers and gilders by magnetic electricity’ at The Sheffield Fork & Spoon Manufactory. By 1851, 59 workers were employed. Two years later, the building in High Street was replaced by a new block.
William C. Hutton, Claremont Place, died on 27 December 1865, aged 63, and was buried in the General Cemetery. He left under £16,000. He had five sons by his wife, Mary Ann. Two moved to Canada (William Henry and George) and the three remaining – James Edward (1838-1890), Robert (1839-1896), and Herbert (1843-1904) – joined the Sheffield firm. The overall trend after W.C. Hutton’s death was expansion: the firm had employed 106 workers in 1861, but by 1881 that figure was 281 (170 men, 56 women, 30 boys, and 25 girls). Interesting sidelights are thrown on the business by an official commission on child employment in 1865. It observed that Hutton’s High Street workshops were cramped, dirty (with no washing facilities), and dangerous. Fifty boys and girls (under 18) were employed. Boys were employed in rolling and stamping and some had lost fingers. Buffer girls did the polishing, but they were contracted and paid through their male overseers. Explained Hutton: ‘buffing is so dirty that only females of a not very superior class like to come into it, so that we would as soon not have the direct responsibility of them, and we do not inquire too much about them’ (White, 18651).
Fatalities had occurred at the factory. Emma Memmott, aged 14, had become entangled in the shaft that drove the buffing wheels – a death that resulted in a coroner’s request for Hutton’s to improve safety measures (Sheffield Independent, 9 August 1856). However, eleven years later an even younger girl – Mary Cudmore, aged 12 – was killed in the same way (Sheffield Independent, 26 October 1867).
In 1864, Herbert Hutton, the youngest of W. C. Hutton’s sons, had joined the business. Herbert managed the Sheffield factory, while his brother James Edward left Sheffield in 1861 to organize the London office at Thavies Inn, Holborn. Robert Hutton was a partner for a time but retired in 1879. He died from pneumonia at St Leonard’s-on-Sea on 1 June 1896, aged 56, leaving £9,657. In 1884, Hutton’s abandoned the cramped High Street for a purpose-built factory in West Street, which employed over 300 workers (Sheffield Independent, 24 August 1886). James Edward Hutton died at Elm Lodge, Heath Road, Hampstead, on 30 December 1890. He left £42,958. After his death, Herbert Hutton had sole control. In 1893 (when it acquired London silversmith Rupert Favell & Co), the firm became a private limited company with £100,000 capital). Besides Herbert, the directors included William Ernest Hutton (James Edward’s son) and George A. Parker, a nephew.
Hutton’s initially made mostly forks and spoons. Manufacture had been mechanised by the 1870s, when Hutton licensed rolling machinery from Portland Co, London (Ironmonger, 3 August 1878). By 1900, luxury silverware was marketed, such as plated table knives, including butter, dessert, fruit, and fish knives. The firm had eight departments – metal casting and rolling; spoons and forks; electro-plated holloware; sterling silver; cutlery; Britannia metal; plating; and repairs. In 1867, Hutton’s won a Gold Medal at the Paris Exhibition. It registered silver marks in Sheffield in 1857, 1866, 1875, and 1880. In 1902, Hutton’s acquired the marks of Creswick & Co. The company employed silverware designers, such as T. Swaffield Brown (1845-1914), who directed the firm’s art department from 1887. The firm’s output is described in Culme (1987)2.
Herbert Hutton’s 50th birthday was marked by a presentation by the workforce (stated to number over 500). In his speech of thanks, Hutton warned about foreign competition and criticised the trades unions (his holloware workers had been on strike in 1890). He remarked that:
He had been tired of seeing the workpeople working in unhealthy shops and miserable surroundings, and as soon as possible he resolved to build some fine works. He built the present works and they nearly ruined him, but he had got over that. (Hear, hear.) He had been told that the electro-plating business either sent a man to a lunatic asylum, turned him to drink, or made him early bald. (Laughter.) He seemed to have escaped with the best of these evils (Sheffield Independent, 24 July 1893).
Herbert Hutton took little part in public life, though he was devoted to the Volunteers (which brought him the title of Colonel). As a boss, he ‘never wasted a word … and was abrupt in manner’ (Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 8 June 1904). He died at his mansion Tapton Croft, Tapton House Road, on 7 June 1904, aged 61, after a stroke. According to press reports, nearly 600 workers followed the cortège to Fulwood churchyard. He left £7,779. This was modest compared to the fortunes of some of his competitors in the silver trade. Apparently, this sum was mostly from the auction of Tapton Croft and his country residence, The Moorlands, at Froggatt Edge (Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 27 July 1904). Thereafter, according to one family member, ‘the business lacked [Herbert’s] leadership and drive’ (Hutton, 19563). The family quarrelled and the firm entered the First World War with its future uncertain. In 1915, the Huttons joined James Dixon & Sons, Walker & Hall and Barker Bros, Birmingham, in the Sheffield Flatware Co Ltd. This failed. Wm. Hutton’s experimented with stainless cutlery. An early table knife survives in the Hawley Collection and is marked ‘BRIGHTEST’. But in the 1920s, the factory in West Street was closed and the trade marks and goodwill were transferred to James Dixon & Sons. Cutlery products stamped with the Hutton mark (crossed arrows, which was originally owned by Creswick) continued to be made.
1. White, J E, Fourth Report of the Children’s Employment Commission (London, 1865)
2. Culme, John, The Directory of Gold and Silversmiths, Jewellers and Allied Traders 1838-1914 (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2 vols, 1987)
3. Hutton, R S, ‘Notes on the History of William Hutton & Son’ (1956), typescript in SCLLS