The partners were Henry Gray and Joseph Wallis, who combined in about 1870.  Their firm was listed in the Sheffield directory in 1871 as a German silver spoon and fork manufacturer at Sylvester Works, Sylvester Lane, Arundel Street.   Henry Gray had been born at Attercliffe in 1839, the son of William (a die sinker) and his wife, Martha.  Henry followed his father’s trade as a die sinker, but by 1871 was enumerated in the Census as a spoon and fork maker, who employed two men and a boy.  He lived at Darnall Hill, with his wife, Ann (who was nearly twenty years his senior and had been born at ‘Cornwall; Silly [sic] Islands’).  Joseph Wallis (1842-1906) was the son of Joseph, an ironmonger in High Street, and his wife, Margaret. 

The Gray and Wallis partnership was dissolved almost immediately at the start of 1872.   Joseph Wallis & Co continued to trade for a few months, but in June 1872 that company, too, was liquidated.  The stock-in-trade of German silver table spoon and fork blanks, fish eaters, and carvers was offered at auction.  On sale, too, was the machinery and plant, including a large engine and boiler with rolls, which had been laid down recently by Pattinson Bros (Sheffield Independent, 1 May 1872). 

After this business failure, Henry Gray apparently left Sheffield, but it has been impossible so far to trace his later life.  Wallis remained in Sheffield for a few years (he was an unemployed clerk in the 1881 Census), but then left to live at Aston, Warwickshire, He died there on 31 December 1906, aged 63.  He left about £15 to his widow, Emily Anne née Vickers, whom he had married in 1879.