Joseph Cowley was born on 8 July 1768 at Edensor, near Chatsworth.  His father was upholsterer to the Duke of Devonshire.  In 1782, Joseph was apprenticed to a table knife cutler in the Park, Sheffield, where he soon gave way (in his own words) to ‘many foolish habits’ (Holland, 1830¹).  Disillusioned with his life in Sheffield, he travelled to Liverpool in 1793 and volunteered for the Navy.  He saw action at Toulon, fell seriously ill with fever, and underwent a religious conversion.  When he returned to Sheffield, he became a Methodist and was particularly active in Sunday Schools.  He became superintendent of Red Hill Sunday School and Secretary of the Sunday School Union.

He returned to the cutlery trade.  By 1817, he was listed at 33 Pinstone Street as a factor and manufacturer of table knives and forks.  He advertised ‘Frame Table Steels’, because ‘most persons – and especially females – have felt or witnessed the difficulty and unpleasantness of using the common steels at table’ (Sheffield Independent, 6 June 1829).  Cowley’s selling point was that his table sets were entirely free from brass in their construction.  Like many cutlers who offered a novelty, Cowley had problems in turning a profit.  His losses in business were often very heavy, partly because (it was said) his religious sentiments made him easy prey to the ‘artifices and chicanery of designing men’ (Holland, 1830¹).  Cowley died at Sheffield on 6 December 1829 and was buried in Edensor churchyard.  In the following year, the poet John Holland published a Sketch of his life, based on Cowley’s papers.  It largely concentrated on his religious life.  Cowley’s old stock – finished and unfinished table cutlery; shear, tilted, and rolled steel; and six hearths of blade and fork makers’ tools – was sold (Sheffield Independent, 13 March 1830).  His only son, John, became a clerk in London, but died in a house fire in Marylebone Street in 1840 (Sheffield Independent, 23 May 1840).

^1. Holland, John, Sketch of the Life and Character of the Late Mr Joseph Cowley (Sheffield, 1830)