“At Sheffield are actually cast and finished, most, if not all, the parts of grates sold as their own make by the London furnishing ironmongers.  Their names are placed on them, but, in truth, they merely put the parts together.  I saw in Messrs. Picklay’s rooms superior castings for backs of grates, little inferior in delicacy to plaster of Paris; and for grates connected with one of these patterns, I was told 100 guineas each was lately paid by a northern squire.  Grates with folding doors are made here as well as at Chesterfield.  The doors are in half heights, so as to serve two purposes, and grates so supplied sell for about two guineas extra.  Mr. Picklay has brought the kitchen range to great perfection.  With one fire he roasts, boils with water and steam, and bakes.  Economy and completeness were never more usefully combined; and a public establishment in Sheffield is fitted with one which has cooked a dinner complete for above three hundred persons.  It cost nearly L300, but such grates for small families may be had at ten guineas.

“The mercantile part of the Sheffield trade is performed chiefly by travellers, but the principal shops in London deal directly with the manufacturers here.  To humour public prejudice in regard to “Town make,” as it is called, and to serve as an advertisement for various retailers in London and other large towns, their connexions in Sheffield keep steel brands, with which their names are placed on the articles, and they thereby pass with the public as the real manufacturers.  I saw in different workshops, in Sheffield, the steel brands of our famous town makers, and the articles in wholesale quantities packing up to meet the demand in London for “real town made.”  This is a standing joke at the expense of cockney credulity among the Sheffield cutlers.

“Sheffield is noted for the manufacture of superior files; and many anecdotes are told of the artifices which have been made use of to aggrandize or to repudiate the celebrity of the marks of some well-known makers.

“In Sheffield generally the workmen get from 20s. to 24s. per week.  Dry grinders get L2, and some L5 or L6, and these high wages are paid as an equivalent for the shortness of life.  Many women are employed as filers, burnishers, polishers, finishers, &c. &c.; and they get from 6s. to 12s. per week.

“Very fine cutlery is manufactured by Mr. Crawshaw.  I saw in his warehouse all those elegant patterns of pen-knives which, in the best shops of London, Bath, &c. excite so much admiration.  His lobster knives, with four or more blades, on slit springs, with pearl and tortoiseshell handles, are the most perfect productions of British manufacture.  His pen-knives with rounded or beveled backs, to turn in the quill and shave the point, are simple and effective improvements.  He showed me plain pocket-knives so highly finished, that the first cost is 38s., yet so deceptive is cutlery, that I might have preferred