This scissors manufacturer worked in the Lambert Street / Pea Croft district between 1828 and the early 1830s.  By 1837, Oates was producing scissors and daggers in Steelhouse Lane and was also a shopkeeper in Hoyle Street.  In the 1840s, he mixed scissors manufacture with running a beer house.  In the late 1840s – when he ceased working as a publican – and early 1850s his address as a scissors maker was 13th Court, Hoyle Street, with a residence at Chace House, Loxley.  One of his apprentice clerks was Robert F. Mosley.  In 1851, he employed thirty workers.  By 1858, Oates had moved to Gatefield Works, Upperthorpe, and resided at Belmont in that district.  In 1858, he registered a patent for the forging of scissors by stamping them out using dies.  By the year of his death, his workforce had increased to 53.  He died on 11 December 1861, aged 60, leaving most of his effects (under £6,000) to his wife Matilda (aged about 23), including an annuity of £40.   In January 1862, the sale of his possessions at Belmont showed that Oates had lived in some comfort, with a good stock of champagne.  He was buried in St Thomas’s churchyard, Crookes.  Thomas Hague (a fire iron and scissor maker at Bridge Street) announced that he was Oates’ ‘successor’ (Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 16 May 1862).