In the nineteenth century, Rodgers had an unsurpassed reputation and a history that was said to have been synonymous with the cutlery trade itself.  In 1724, a ‘house workshop’ was rented to John Rodgers (1701-15 January 1785) for seven guineas a year, at Holy (or Hawley) Croft, a backstreet off Campo Lane, near the present Cathedral (Leader, 1905)¹.  In 1724, the Company of Cutlers ‘let’ a mark to John Rodgers – a Star and Maltese Cross (originally registered to another cutler in 1682) – which the family was to make world famous.  The mark was confirmed in 1764.

John Rodgers’ three sons – John (1731-1811), Joseph (1743-1821), and Maurice (c.1747-1824) – joined the business.  Sketchley’s Sheffield Directory (1774) listed ‘Joseph and Maurice Rogers [sic], penknife and razor makers, Holy Croft’.  In 1776, Maurice registered a silver mark in his name.  By 1780, more workshops had been occupied in nearby Sycamore Street and soon the business extended from those premises to occupy a nearby block of buildings at an address – 6 Norfolk Street – that would become as familiar as Rodgers’ trade mark.  Rodgers first traded in pen and pocket knives.  After 1800, as Rodgers’ reputation grew, the manufacture of table cutlery and scissors began.  In 1811, Joseph and Maurice dissolved their partnership and the next year Joseph Rodgers & Sons registered a silver mark from Norfolk Street.  In the General Sheffield Directory (1817) the firm appeared as ‘merchants, factors, table and pocket knife, and razor manufacturers’.

Joseph Rodgers died on 21 June 1821, aged 78, and was buried at St Peter’s (inside which a memorial was placed).  He had four sons: John (1779-1859), Joseph (1785-1867), Maurice (1787-1827), and George (1789-5 September 1842).  Joseph, afflicted by blindness, withdrew in 1826, so that John increasingly directed the firm.  He was ‘unobtrusive in his manner’ and ‘shrunk from public affairs.’ (Sheffield Independent, 22 October 1859).  But in business he was ambitious and was one of the founding partners of the Sheffield Banking Co (Leader, 1916²).  He had a flair for marketing and travelled the country taking orders.  Not only was his firm’s output and range greater than any other Sheffield firm, but also its quality was superior, even in a town which prided itself on quality.  A house history contained the company’s manifesto: ‘The principle on which the manufacture of cutlery is carried on by this firm is – quality first … [and] … price comes second’ (Rodgers, 1911³).

Rodgers began making exhibitions knives, which were soon deployed in the quest for royal patronage.  In 1821, Stuart Wortley (then Member of Parliament for Yorkshire and later Lord Wharncliffe) apparently presented John Rodgers to King George IV.  The knife maker gave the King a minute specimen of cutlery with 57 blades, which occupied only an inch [25mm] when closed.   In 1822, Rodgers’ was awarded its first Royal Warrant.  Another fourteen royal appointments – both from British and overseas royal dignitaries – followed over the next eighty years.  The Royal imprimatur was always to be important to a company that considered itself the ‘royalty’ of the Sheffield cutlery trade.  Its company history was duly titled: Under Five Sovereigns.

John Rodgers next commissioned the Year Knife, with a blade for every year (in other words, 1,821).  He also fitted out a cutlery showroom in Norfolk Street.  This was a sensation and disrupted Norfolk Street, as visitors came to marvel at Rodgers’ creations.  These culminated in the Norfolk Knife that Rodgers’ produced for the Great Exhibition in 1851.  This was a sportsman’s knife with 75 blades and tools, which in its display position was over 30-inches [76 cm] long.  A dazzling variety of punches, gimlets and hooks protruded from the back of the knife; while on the other side, a series of acid-etched master blades opened out like a fan.  The total cost was £900 – a considerable sum in the 1850s.

Rodgers’ showroom proved particularly popular with Americans.  The firm had been active in America since 1800, when John Rodgers had first opened a connection with American merchants.  By the early 1820s, Rodgers’ was marketing its pen, pocket, and desk knives in Boston.  Another port of entry for the company’s products was New Orleans (Bazer, 2008⁴).  In Moby Dick (1851), Herman Melville described Ishmael’s reaction to the sight of Queequeg shaving with a harpoon:  ‘Thinks I, Queequeg, this is using Rogers’ [sic] best cutlery with a vengeance’.  The US Congress for many years bought exclusively from Joseph Rodgers – a connection that resulted in Rodgers designing a particular curved pattern of pocket knife, named appropriately the Congress knife.  As one Rodgers’ manager stated: ‘The market for it is almost exclusively American; they will have the best of everything’ (Conway, 1867⁵).

Rodgers’ trade with America was crucial in the firm’s expansion.  The firm, though, also looked East.  By 1850, Rodgers’ had agents in Calcutta, Bombay, and Hong Kong.  These markets enabled Rodgers to become the largest cutlery factory in Sheffield.  Its premises had steadily absorbed the block of buildings bounded by Norfolk Street, Flat Street, Milk Street, and Sycamore Street.  The number of workmen appears to have grown from about 300 in the late 1820s, to over 500 in 1840s, and it kept rising.  By 1862, new showrooms had been built on an even grander scale.  In 1858, another silver mark was registered.  The Star and Maltese Cross was the most famous mark in cutlery – and the most copied.  The firm spent heavily in the courts prosecuting fraudulent users of the mark or those attempting to trade off the magic name.

John Rodgers – ‘Queen’s Cutler’ – died at his residence Abbeydale House on 14 October 1859, aged 80.  He was buried in Ecclesall, where a plaque inside All Saint’s Parish Church commemorates his life.  He left £30,000 – £3½m at 2016 prices – while his blind brother, Joseph, left nearly £25,000, when he died on 3 December 1867.  John Rodgers had no children, so he had recruited nephews as partners, besides individuals from outside the family.  These had included Henry Atkin and Joseph Nelstrop.  Atkin was Master Cutler in 1849 but had left Sheffield by 1857 (he died on 6 September 1887, aged 88, at Shortlands, Beulah Hill, Upper Norwood, leaving £4,005).  Nelstrop withdrew in 1866, though he remained a shareholder (he died at Ackworth Lodge, near Pontefract, on 27 December 1882, aged 80, leaving £50,531).  Another key recruit was Robert Newbold (1819-1896), who had become a partner in 1850.  He was the son of a Coventry ribbon manufacturer, who had married into the Rodgers’ family – a tie that tightened when Robert married Averilda Jane Rodgers (1824-1854), a daughter of Maurice.  In 1871, Joseph Rodgers (1828-1883) – grandson of the Joseph Rodgers who had died in 1821 – and Robert Newbold organized the business into a ‘Ltd’ company with a capital of £130,000.  They became managing directors and took up half the shares, so that the business remained private.  Joseph had retired by 1881 as a very wealthy man.  When he died on 12 May 1883, aged 54, at Selwyn Court, Richmond, Surrey, he left £235,256 (over £26m at 2016 prices).  He was buried at St Mary Magdalene churchyard in Richmond.  Newbold became the chairman and managing director.

The firm continued to expand.  It had offices and warehouses in Cullum Street and Fenchurch Street, London; and in New York, New Orleans, Montreal, and Toronto.  Calcutta, Bombay, and Havana also at various times had a Rodgers’ office.  The Ironmonger (31 January 1871) reported that Rodgers’ workforce was 1,200; and that in 1869, it accounted for one-seventh of all Sheffield’s American cutlery trade.  However, in 1876 the company minute book reported that the American market was stagnating and so Rodgers’ began looking elsewhere.  Newbold described himself in the 1871 Census as an ‘East India merchant’, signifying the company’s shift towards the British Empire.  Australia, for example, was visited by Rodgers’ in 1887.  In Persia, India and Ceylon, the name ‘Rujjus’ or ‘Rojers’ was said to have entered the language as an adjective expressing superb quality.

In 1882, the firm occupied workshops in Pond Hill for the manufacture of pocket knives and three years later silver and electro-plate were added.  By 1888, the value of Rodgers’ shares had more than doubled.  In 1889, a silver and electro-plate showroom was opened in London.  At this time, Rodgers acquired the scissors business of Joseph Hobson & Son.  The Sheffield premises proved too small, and in 1889 a plot of land in River Lane and Pond Hill, opposite the pocket-knife factory (close to the site of the modern bus station), was acquired.  On part of this site a factory was erected for the manufacture of table cutlery.

Rodgers’ catalogues were packed with every type of knife imaginable.  Pocket knives were made in scores of different styles.  Ornate daggers and Bowie knives and complicated horseman’s knives were made routinely.  Some patterns, such as the Congress knife and Wharncliffe knife, were Rodgers’ own design.  The Wharncliffe – with its serpentine handle and beaked master blade – was apparently designed after a dinner attended by Rodgers’ patron Lord Wharncliffe.  The firm’s workmanship was usually backed by the best materials.  In an age less sensitive to conservation, Rodgers’ ivory cellar in Norfolk Street – crammed with giant tusks – was regarded as one of the hidden sights of the town.  Four or five men were constantly employed in sawing the tusks.  Twenty-four tons (equivalent to the slaughter of 1,280 elephants) were needed each year (New Monthly, July 1882).  Not surprisingly, ivory became scarce, pushing Rodgers into the production of cheaper goods with xylonite handles.  Rodgers’ appetite for stag was no less insatiable:  deer horns and antlers filled another cellar.  Pearl came from the Philippines and was cut from the finest Manila shells.  In about 1890, Rodgers’ began forging its own shear steel at a water-powered mill at Leppings Lane, Wadsley Bridge.  In 1894, the operation was transferred to Dyson Holmes Tilt, Oughtibridge; and then in 1903 to Middlewood Forge.  In 1894, Rodgers’ began melting crucible steel at River Lane Works. 

Robert Newbold retired in 1890.  He had become a wealthy landowner, with a taste for collecting fine art and studying church architecture (he gave a stained glass window to Ordsall church and dedicated it to blind partner Joseph Rodgers).  He died at his residence Weycliffe House, St Catherine’s, near Guildford, on 4 July 1896, aged 77.  He left £193,530 and was buried at Guildford Cemetery.  Maurice George Rodgers (14 June 1855-1898) and John Rodgers (12 September 1856-1919) became joint-managing directors.  They were the grandsons of Maurice Rodgers and sons of George Joseph Rodgers (1827-1866), who had been a partner until his premature death (when he left about £35,000).  Maurice and John immediately had to deal with the McKinley Tariff, which was said to have halved their American business.  In response, Maurice Rodgers made business tours of South Africa.  Despite increasing foreign competition – particularly from Germany and America – and the decline of the American market, Rodgers’ prospered before the First World War.  Between 1906 and 1913, the annual dividend to shareholders (mostly the Rodgers’ clan and their close friends) was never less than 12½ per cent.  However, this may have been because the firm was failing to invest.  The partners dealt with the downturn in trade caused by the American tariff by the simple expedient of cutting workers’ wages (rather than by reducing their own dividends).  In 1891, this provoked a prolonged and bitter strike.

The Rodgers’ family had become aloof and conservative.   It pointedly shunned Cutlers’ Hall and not until 1898 did one of the family deign to serve as Master Cutler.  This was Maurice Rodgers, who died after a stroke in his year of office on 23 May 1898, aged 42.  He left £9,294 and was buried at Ecclesall.  His younger brother, John, took over the business and continued to expand its Norfolk Street operations.  In 1905, the River Lane factory was extended considerably, when the silver and electro-plate department was moved there from Pond Hill.   In 1907, Sheaf Island Works (once occupied by Wm. Jackson & Co) was purchased, bringing the ground covered by Rodgers’ to about five acres.   

With a workforce probably around 1,500, Rodgers’ operated the biggest cutlery manufactory in Sheffield and probably in the world.  Views of 6 Norfolk Street, its various factories, showrooms, and old-time workers appeared in Rodgers’ house history, Under Five Sovereigns (1911)³, which gloried in its patronage by five English monarchs.   John Rodgers had a die-hard adherence to the old ways.  Incredibly, until after the War the company had no telephone number or telegraph address in directories.   John Rodgers had banned telephones and was also ‘prejudiced against typewriters, and not until some months after his death was a machine to be found in the offices’ (Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 8 December 1919).

The First World War undermined this Dickensian world.  The company was hit hard by the falling demand for high-quality pocket knives and the impact of Army conscription.  Profits fell during the War from about £20,000 to £12,000 a year.  John Rodgers died on 19 January 1919, aged 62, at his home in Endcliffe Avenue.  He was buried at Ecclesall churchyard, leaving an estate of £33,202.  In the previous September, his eldest son, John, had been killed in action in France.  These deaths (and the loss of 55 Rodgers’ men in the trenches) coincided with a marked shift in the fortunes of the business.  The firm faced the challenges of stainless steel, increasing mechanization, and a further erosion of the high-quality sector.  A general business slump added to the problems.  John Rodger’s son, Joseph Lionel Rodgers (1898-1938), and Frederic James Pullan (1863-1944), became managing directors.  Profits had evaporated by 1923, when the company passed the dividend on the company shares for the time.  Pullan retired in 1926, when Donald A. Palmer was appointed general manager.  In that year, plans were made to vacate the Norfolk Street site and three years later it was sold for £52,500.  The company consolidated at its three other sites: No. 6 Works at Pond Hill for the manufacture of pocket-knives; Sheaf Island Works for scissors, forging, and laboratory analysis; and River Lane Works for table cutlery and trade knives.  A new mechanised scissors plant was opened and the production of safety razors was launched.  

In 1930, the firm opened a multi-storey block adjacent to the main works at Pond Hill.  This housed a new showroom, offices, and sales and packing department.  The company published a commemorative booklet for the opening of the Pond Hill premises.  A Royal Record (1930)⁶ had the same five monarchs on the cover.  Stainless cutlery was featured in the booklet, though Rodgers’ was still utilising crucible steel and shear steel.  Within months of the opening ceremony, the company chairman Robert Leader had died, aged 69.  The firm had a fondness for figurehead chairman, with no knowledge of the industry, and replaced Leader (a barrister, whose family had owned The Sheffield Independent) with another.  This was George Alexander Calder (1859-1945), an elderly civil servant, who did not even live in Sheffield.  The direct involvement of the Rodgers’ family was ending.  In 1930, D. A. Palmer was appointed managing director.  

In 1932, the assets of the bankrupt silver-plate firm, John Round & Son, were acquired for £5,000 and integrated into Pond Hill.   But attempts to break into new markets, such as safety razors, were failures.   Like Wostenholm, Rodgers’ barely kept afloat in the depression.  In 1932, the paid-up capital was reduced from £162,000 to £48,100.   Shareholders became restive and in 1937 they complained about the Rodgers’ management.  The company struggled on and returned to profitability in the Second World War.   Its paid-up capital was £53,100 in 1940, when the firm made a small profit of £3,263 (deemed by the board as ‘not unsatisfactory’).  The annual profit topped £10,000 by 1946.  But due to the wartime shortage of nickel, the holloware business was closed down after the War.  

Rodgers’ slogan remained ‘The Knife of Kings – The King of Knives’.   But hardly any traditional craftsmen were left by the 1950s.  In 1961, the firm employed about 325 workers.  It continued to produce a range of good-quality ‘STARCROSS’ pocket, kitchen, and trade knives, and scissors.  But Rodgers’ pocket-knife business was soon undermined by German and Swiss imports, while its table cutlery faced fierce Far Eastern competition.  In 1966, Sheaf Island Works and River Lane Works were closed, leaving only Pond Hill Works.   In 1967, Rodgers’ became a public company, but the workforce was not many more than a hundred (about the same as the number of shareholders).   The managing director was Andrew C. Rodger, who had a background in engineering, but was also running Archford Investments, a financial vehicle.  In 1968, Rodger led a successful £89,000 buyout of the Sheffield company by Archford (now a subsidiary of London merchant banker Dawnay Day).   Rodger closed Pond Hill Works and relocated to a factory at St Mary’s Gate.  

A. C. Rodger’s ambitious schemes were trailed in the Sheffield Spectator (December 1969).  A photograph of him in captain-of-industry pose suggested a man who would swiftly sort out the ancient cutlery manufacturer.  In 1971, Joseph Rodgers & Sons (still owned by Archford) bought its old rival, Wostenholm, and manufacturing was moved to Guernsey Road in the suburb of Heeley.   But in 1975 the Rodgers-Wostenholm Group was, in turn, absorbed by Richards, which acquired for £22,000 most of Archford’s issued capital, besides a consideration of £178,000 to cover Dawnay loans.   After 1977, the company (Richards, Rodgers, Wostenholm) was acquired by American interests, but ceased trading in 1983.   The company’s trade marks – the Star and Maltese Cross – passed to Meteor Industries and then to Egginton Bros.   Besides its marks, Joseph Rodgers & Sons left an enduring legacy in its knives.  Its dazzling exhibition pieces and other fine cutlery show that the company’s reputation as Sheffield’s foremost knife maker was well founded.

^1. Leader, R E, History of the Company of Cutlers in Hallamshire in the County of York (Sheffield, 1905-6)

^2. Leader, R E, The Sheffield Banking Company Limited: An Historical Sketch (Sheffield, 1916)

^3. Rodgers, Joseph & Sons, Under Five Sovereigns (Sheffield, 1911)

^4. Bazer, Phil, New Orleans Cutlers until the 1900s (The author, 2008)

^5. Conway, M D, ‘Sheffield – A Battle-Field of English Labor’, Harper’s Monthly Magazine 36 (Dec 1867- May 1868)

^6. Rodgers, Joseph & Sons Ltd, A Royal Record (1930)