William Nicholson was a ‘general dealer in all sorts of cutlery’.  His enterprise was originally based in Sycamore Street and was listed in 1833.  That remained Nicholson’s address until the early 1850s.   At the Great Exhibition (1851), he displayed knives carved with profiles of the Royal Family; Wharncliffe, Norfolk, Congress, and American cotton knives; and ‘improved’ American hunting knives.   He received an Honourable Mention from the Exhibition jurors.  His firm employed four men.  William Stenton & Son in New York acted as agent.  Nicholson’s wife, Elizabeth, died (aged 46) on 20 January 1851 from ‘dropsy’, and was buried in the General Cemetery.  Nicholson himself was last listed in Sycamore Street in 1852.  He moved to Arundel Street; then directories between 1860 and 1865 listed him as a merchant and fine cutlery manufacturer in Townhead Street, with a house in Peel Terrace.  He had retired by 1871.   His second wife, Mary, died (aged 56) on 29 December 1856 at Peel Terrace and was buried in the General Cemetery.   William Nicholson, ‘gentleman’, Whitham Road, Broomhill, died (aged 75) on 25 March 1875.  His unconsecrated burial was in the General Cemetery.  No trade mark for Nicholson has been traced.