Glossop & Nutt was a merchant and table knife manufacturer, which involved two families connected by marriage.  The chief partner was John Rhodes Glossop (c.1793-1843).  His early life is obscure, though on 20 Janu-ary 1793 an individual of that name (the son of George and Lydia) was baptised at Masbrough Independent Chapel, Rotherham.  In 1819, when Glossop was living in York, he married Mrs Mary Story at Chester-le-Street, near Durham.  They had a daughter, Ann (1822-1876).   In 1830, John Rhodes Glossop married again: this time at York to Eliza Nutt (1808-1872).  She was the daughter of John Nutt (c.1773-1834), a York comb manufacturer, and his wife, Mary Ann Walton.  Eliza had two brothers:  John Walton Nutt (1809-1877), a comb maker and later London stockbroker, and William Rufus Nutt (baptised at Holy Trinity, York, in 1817).  

In 1833, John Rhodes Glossop was listed as a traveller in Sheffield, who resided at Hanover Terrace.  In 1837, his address was Westfield Terrace and he was a merchant partnering George Thorpe and John Edmund Middleton (see Thorpe, Wragg & Co).  After this was dissolved in 1838, Glossop became associated with William Rufus Nutt.  Robson’s Birmingham & Sheffield Directory (1839) listed J. R. Glossop, Nutt & Co at Carver Street as a table, pen and pocket knife, razors, and scissors manufacturer and merchant, steel converter and refiner.  In 1841, the partnership was listed in Arundel Street.  In the Census (1841), William R. Nutt was part of the Glossop household at Glossop Road.  On 31 December 1842, Nutt married at Sheffield parish church Glossop’s eldest daughter, Ann.

The firm was essentially a factor.  Its knives, for example, were marked Glossop & Nutt, but made by outworkers (Sheffield Independent, 26 November 1842).  The partnership was short-lived.  John R. Glossop died on 6 June 1843 at the house of John Walton Nutt in York (Sheffield Independent, 17 Jun 1843).  John and Eliza had two sons: Arthur Osborne Glossop and John Rhodes Glossop, who became partners in Boardman, Glossop.   Within a few weeks of Glossop’s death, Nutt filed for insolvency and the business was wound up (Sheffield Independent, 7 October 1843).  Nutt found work as a traveller.  In the Census (1851), he and his family were living at Attercliffe and he had a job as a warehouseman.  In the following year, when he was a table cutlery manager at Ibbotson Bros, he was sentenced to two months in prison for fraud.  His daughter, Sarah, was born in 1853.  However, in the Census (1861) his wife Ann described herself as widowed.  She died at Brincliffe Edge on 9 October 1876, aged 54, and was buried at the General Cemetery.   Her obituary described her as ‘the eldest daughter of the late John Rhodes Glossop’ (Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 4 October 1876).   No mention was made of William Rufus and his death has so far been impossible to trace.   His son, William Rufus Nutt Jun, later started his own silversmith business.