Watts was apparently founded in West Bar Green in 1765 by Michael Shaw, who was a clog-clasp and dog-collar maker (products which had metal parts.)  After 1833, Brian Bates (1802-1882) – who had been born in Buxton and whose wife, Harriet, was related to the Shaws – operated the business.  Twenty years later Bates was joined in partnership by John Watts (c.1829-1895), who had been born in Lound, Nottinghamshire.  In 1862, the partnership was dissolved.   Bates returned to Buxton and became a hotelier and property owner.   He was the proprietor of some of the best hotels in Buxton, including The Old Hall.  Brian Bates, late of The Square, died in Buxton ‘after a long and painful illness’ on 9 February 1882, aged 79 (Sheffield Independent, 1 February 1882).  He left £17,464 and was buried  in Christ Church graveyard, Burbage, near Buxton.   

Watts, who was one of Bates’s executors, took control of the firm and began to expand its operations.  During the 1870s and 1880s, he concentrated his business in a small tenement-style factory in Lambert Street that had once housed various cutlers and at the back had ‘long been used by coffin makers’ (Leader, 1876¹).  In 1881, two men and eight women were employed.  John Watts, of Lea Wood, Pitsmoor, died on 22 July 1895, aged 66, and was buried at Fulwood.  He left £7,314.  Until his death, he described himself as a clasp manufacturer.  

Watts’s son, John Robert Watts (1859-1939), also regarded himself initially as clasp maker.  However, he transformed the firm into a fully-fledged cutlery manufacturer, selling pen and pocket knives, razors, besides graining combs, skates and clasps, and stampers and piercers.   By the First World War, Watts had acquired most of the courtyard workshops at the lower end of Lambert Street.  These included the premises of George Gill.  The firm also began buying up trade names, including the ‘B4*ANY’ mark of Frederick Ward; the ‘MANHATTAN’ mark of John Newton & Co;  and the name ‘H. T. JOHNSON’, which had passed from Johnson, Spencer & Co to John Newton.

J. R. Watts marketed a safety razor in the 1890s.  This was well before Gillette appeared on the scene and it is tempting to claim that Watts was a pioneer.  However, although he may have been the first to market such a razor in Sheffield, his various models – marked ‘JW’ – were based on American patents.  Chief amongst these was the Fox safety razor, which was patented in 1892 by E. Lothar Schmitz, a German immigrant in New York (Waits, 2009²).  Watts later produced safety razors with the trade mark ‘THE GLEANER’.   The company’s claims relating to the safety razor were set out in a letter to an American journal (reported in The Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 30 January 1932); namely, that Watts had sold safety razors to customer in Gloucester in 1875; and that Watts had also made the first double-edged wafer blade in the UK.   Certainly, Watts did take out patents himself for a safety razor, a cyclist’s knife, scissors/razor sharpeners, and a trousers press.  

The firm remained well known for its cutlery until well after the Second World War, especially for its gadget knives (Ellis, 2009³).   It was also noted for clog clasps, cloggers’ knives, shoe knives, toe plates, abrasive-wheel dressers and cutters, ice skates, can openers, surgical scalpels, and wardrobe fittings.   Many of these products were factored from Birmingham, London, and Solingen in Germany.   In the interwar period, Watts operated from Union Wheel, Corporation Street, and Burnt Tree Lane, besides Lambert Street.   In 1929, it became a private limited company, with £40,000 capital.  John R. Watts died at his home Oakbourne, Oakholme Road, on 3 April 1939, aged 80, and was buried at Fulwood.  He left £39,740.   

The company remained in business until almost the end of the century.  It was last owned by the Bishop family, who wound up Watts in 1999.  After Lambert Works finally closed its doors, visitors found a ‘gem of a survival of [Sheffield’s] industrial and social past’ (Machan, 1999⁴).   Behind the crumbling plasterwork frontage, that still bravely proclaimed ‘JOHN WATTS ESTABLISHED 1765’, was a rabbit warren of nearly ninety rooms and five floors, linked by corridors and covered courtyards.   Dusty office ledgers, Dickensian high desks and stools, grinding wheels, and even a complete cutlery workshop lay abandoned.  But not for long.  By 2007, the Lambert Street factory had been converted into apartments.

^1. Leader, Robert E, Reminiscences of Old Sheffield (Sheffield, 2nd edn 1876)
^2. Waits, R K, Before Gillette: The Quest for a Safe Razor Inventors and Patents, 1762-1901 (2009)
^3. Ellis, Frank and Barbara, Corkscrews (Ramsbury, Wiltshire, 2009)
^4. Machan, Peter, ‘John Watts, Lambert Street: A Surviving Sheffield Firm with over 200 Years’ History’, in Melvyn Jones (ed), Aspects of Sheffield 2 (Barnsley, 1999)