This cutler’s name is common enough to make it difficult to ascertain many personal details.  He was a table knife manufacturer, who was based at Peacroft.  He appeared first in a Sheffield directory in 1818, though a William Wild, table knife cutler, had been in partnership with Jacob Hatfield.  This was dissolved in 1805.  By the start of the 1820s, William Wild was operating at Peacroft as a factor and table knife manufacturer.  He was briefly in partnership as a factor with William Woodcock, but Wild & Woodcock was dissolved in 1821.   In the directory in 1822, William Wild & Co, merchant, was listed at 19 Peacroft; William Wild, factor and table knife manufacturer, was at 20 Peacroft; and William Wild’s residence was at Broad Lane.

William Wild, though, had already filed for bankruptcy.  An auction was organised at the end of 1821, which offered at his Peacroft premises his finished and unfinished stock of table knives, working tools, and counting house, warehouse, and workshop fixtures, valued at upwards of £900 (Sheffield Independent, 15 December 1821).   The auction advertisement provided a detailed breakdown of Wild’s stock, tools, and materials, which included ‘an active and powerful horse’.  A separate auction was to be held at Wild’s premises at Broad Lane, where he was selling groceries, grocer’s fixtures, flour binns, and household furniture.  This suggests that he had also been operating as a grocer.   After his bankruptcy, William Wild’s subsequent life is untraced.