© Ken Hawley Collection Trust - K.0854
John Henry Potter was born in Lenton, Nottinghamshire, on 22 March 1860. His father, John Potter, had moved from Nottinghamshire to Sheffield and had started a printing and newspaper business. Later he sold fancy cutlery and tableware. In 1879, after a private education, J. H. Potter launched a business as a table cutlery and electro-plate manufacturer at Rockingham Works in Rockingham Street. By the early 1890s, he was operating from Rockingham Silver Plate & Cutlery Works, Division Street. The company’s catalogues show a wide range of knives, forks, spoons, dishes, trays, cocktail shakers, candlesticks, and claret jugs. Potter collaborated with makers of household products – such as Lever Bros, the soap manufacturer – who issued coupons or held competitions, with Rockingham Works’ silverware as the prizes. Specialities included ship and hotel plate and cutlery, sports prizes, and trophies. The factory supplied thousands of pieces for passenger liners, including the two Queens, Lyons tea houses, and Gaumont cinemas. In his workshops, Potter relied upon young girls and women – sometimes employing them beyond the statutory hours on Saturdays, for which he was prosecuted and fined (Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 17 January 1902). On his father’s death in 1899, Potter acquired the family’s silverware shop at St Nicholas Cliff, Scarborough. It was run by J. H. Potter’s youngest son, Percy.
In the 1920s, Potter expanded into adjacent properties in Division Street (which became known as Koban and Western Works). In 1925, the company became a private limited company, with £20,000 capital, and with Potter and his sons – Cyril Aubert (1888-1964) and Percy Gerald (1890-1964) – as directors. Trade marks included a two-headed woman above the pun ‘SILVA’; the word ‘ARARA’; ‘FORGET ME NOT’ (which had belonged to Thomas Makin; and ‘ROCKINGHAM’. The firm registered silver marks in 1885, 1890, and 1898. John Potter died suddenly on 14 February 1933, aged 73, at his home Five Oaks, Glossop Road (once the home of William Butcher. ‘Loss to Sport in Sheffield’ was the headline in The Sheffield Daily Telegraph. Potter had been an ardent cricketer and the cricket club at Rockingham Works was regarded as one of the best in the district. He was buried in Ecclesall, leaving £34,390.
In 1935, Potter’s was part of an ill-fated merger – Silver & Steelcrafts Ltd – that included Fenton Bros and James Deakin & Sons. The combine collapsed within three years. Cyril had been involved in the merger, but he was a bankrupt, and more interested in dog racing than running a company. A version of the subsequent story can be read in the autobiography of Herbert Housley, whose firm was a tenant in Enterprise Works. This factory was occupied by the Potters. Housley recalled: ‘Rockingham Plate & Cutlery Company [was] owned by Cyril and Percy Potter, two unforgettable characters who could have come straight out of a Dickens novel’ (Housley, 19981). They were in straightened circumstances and their company went into receivership, though the resourceful brothers resurrected Bunting, Langdon & Co Ltd – a cutlery firm that had been based in John Street in the 1920s. They continued at Enterprise Works with the same office and showroom! Confusingly, Rockingham Plate Ltd soon appeared at the same address; and the Register of the Company of Cutlers (Whitham and Sykes, 19532) listed ‘J. H. Potter & Sons Ltd’ at a Division Street address, using the trade mark ‘IDIUM’.
Cyril’s and Percy’s spinster sister, Gladys Evelyn Potter (1893-1950), held the marks of J. H. Potter. She died on 26 November 1950, leaving £1,106. Cyril and Percy died within a month of each other in 1964: Percy on 17 August (leaving £397); and Cyril on 24 September. The Potter family grave is in Ecclesall churchyard. Bunting, Langdon was liquidated in 1953. In 1961, The Rockingham Plate & Cutlery Co Ltd was struck off the register of companies. Descendant John G. Potter compiled an unpublished history (2009) of J. H. Potter & Sons.
1. Housley, Herbert, Back to the Grindstone (Sheffield, 1998)
2. Whitham, J H, and Sykes, A, (eds) Register of Trade Marks of the Cutlers’ Company of Sheffield (London, 1953)