George Jowitt (1866-1955) was born in Sheffield on 20 August 1866, the son of Henry (a pocket-blade forger at George Wostenholm) and his wife, Martha.  George became a grinder and so joined a trade with an average life expectancy of no more than forty years.   He began work aged nine, and after a boyhood of sometimes extreme poverty, by 1881 he was working for a mester and supplying blades to Joseph Rodgers & Sons in a rented workshop on Rodgers’ premises.  He worked 53 hours a week for 6s 6d [35p].  By 1886, he was a little mester himself, with his sons, George (1891-1979) and Harry (1889-1959), alongside him.  In his reminiscences (copy at Hawley Collection; and quoted in Jowitt, 1988¹), he wrote: ‘Grinding was a very dirty dangerous job and very unhealthy.  Many a young man have I helped carry to his grave for we all at that time worked on sandstones.  One boy got killed – table stone burst.  The death of so many made a great impression on me and I decided if poss [ible] to eliminate the sandstone’.   In 1906, he partnered a German scissors grinder in Sheffield, Bill Matern, but their magnesite grinding wheels proved unreliable.  After 1910, Jowitt began importing American artificial wheels with more success.  

In 1920, George Jowitt & Sons Ltd was registered, with £5,000 capital.  It acquired the business of George Jowitt Sen. (residing at Glenalmond Road), an ‘abrasive wheel factor’ at 286 Rockingham Street.   His son, George (Ecclesall Road), was co-director (Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 24 August 1920).  Jowitt formulated his own Bakelite resin composition for abrasive wheels, which began to transform the cutlery trade and the health of its grinders.  In 1930, the Jowitts opening workshops in Lescar Lane, Hunter’s Bar (Jowitt, 1966²).  In the 1950s, Jowitt’s opened subsidiaries in Philadelphia (USA) and Eindhoven (Holland).  George Jowitt, Brincliffe Edge Road, died on 31 March 1955, aged 88, leaving £51,798.  The firm remained in family hands.  In 1982, the headquarters moved to Dronfield.  George Alan Jowitt (1924- 2006), the son of George Jun., was Master Cutler in 1988.  In 2016, George Jowitt & Sons Ltd was dissolved, though Jowitt UK continued to trade at Chesterfield.

^1. Jowitt, George & Sons Ltd, Brochure (1988)

^2. Jowitt, George, George Jowitt & Sons Ltd: A History (1966)