This branch of the Oates’ family in Stannington included some long-established cutlers.  The 1787 directory listed Matthew and William Oates as manufacturers of spotted-knives (cutlery covered with horn spotted to look like shell), using a heart, arrow, horizontal letter ‘b’ mark.  By the 1820s, directories listed five family members making pocket knives in Stannington: Luke, William, John, Jehoiada, and Jonathan.

Luke Oates (1799-1875) was apparently the son of Matthew Oates (born 1765).  In the early nineteenth century, Luke in Stannington manufactured Barlow and fish hook knives.  He used the pistol and ‘b’ mark of his predecessors.  But his use of the word ‘Barlow’ and various other marks led to a long-running legal dispute with another maker of ‘old original Barlow knives’, Henry Mills (Smith, 2001¹).   Ironically, Oates later complained in the Sheffield press about makers copying his own mark (Sheffield Independent, 24 November 1869).

Luke’s workshops were Alpha Works, in Townend Street, Stannington.  These still stand at the rear of a house and have been described by Bayliss (1995)² as ‘the only cutlery workshop in [Stannington] that resembles a town workshop in type and size’.   Oates also rented – with razor maker Pitchford – part of Rowell Bridge Grinding Wheel on the River Loxley, where he employed grinders.  When this wheel was hit by the Sheffield Flood (1864), Oates claimed compensation for his Barlow and fish hook knives and for loss of earnings by his men and relatives, such as Luke Paris Oates and Elijah Oates.

In 1861, Luke Oates employed ten men.  By 1871, the workforce was a dozen (seven men, a boy, and four women).  He died on 21 June 1875, aged 75, and was buried at Underbank Unitarian Chapel, Stannington.   He left under £400 and large stocks of spring, fish hook, and Barlow knives at Alpha Works.  The business was continued by Oates’s son, Squire Elijah Oates (c 1836-1891).  In the Census (1881), his workforce was 20 men and six women.   He stamped some knives ‘S. E. Oates’.  According to Goins (1998)³, E. C. Simmons hardware company in America sold Oates’s barlows in the 1880s.  S. E. Oates died at the Sportsman’s Inn, Stannington, on 15 February 1891, aged 54.  Apparently, he and his wife Sarah Ann operated the pub.  He left £110.  In 1903, the cutlery business was taken over by Alfred Dronfield and James Vickers.  Alpha Works continued to trade in pocket-knives after the First World War, when it assembled products for Thomas Turner & Co and Harrison Bros & Howson.   The small factory closed in 1932 (Smith, 1977⁴).

^1. Smith, D J, ‘The Old Original Barlow Knives’,  South Yorkshire Industrial History Society Journal, No 2 (2001)

^2. Bayliss, Derek (ed), A Guide to the Industrial History of South Yorkshire (Sheffield, 1995)

^3. Goins, J  E, and Goins, C, Goins’ Encyclopedia of Cutlery Markings (Indianapolis, 1998)

^4. Smith, D J, The Cutlery Industry in the Stannington Area (Sheffield, 1977)