Wraggs had a quintessential Sheffield name and was listed as a cutlery manufacturer in the city’s directories after 1919.  It first appeared as Wraggs, spring knife cutlers, 72 Arundel Street.  By 1922, the business was at Montrose Works, Harwood Street.  The owners – Peter Farquharson, James Farquharson, and Trevor Kingsley Hawkins – were associated with the London hardware merchant, James Farquharson & Sons.   In the late 1920s, Wraggs was acquired by Pinchbeck Bros.  The latter had been established in the late nineteenth century, as a hardware merchant and factors, with offices at Broad Street, Birmingham, and Queen Street, London.  The partners – William Ernest Capner Pinchbeck (1857-1916) and Harry Arthur Pinchbeck (1861-1940) – had been born in Birmingham.  Harry had two sons, Samuel (1898-1988) and Frank (1906-?), who joined Pinchbeck Bros.

By 1930, Wraggs’ address was Sceptre Works, 39 Arundel Street; and Pinchbeck’s also had a London office in Friday Street.  They advertised pen, pocket, pruning and eraser knives, advertising pocket-knives, stainless grape fruit preparers, table cutlery, scissors, and butchers’ knives.  Most of these goods would have been factored, though in 1925 Harry Arthur and Samuel had patented a grape and fruit preparer with two special prongs.  An establishment date of 1870 was claimed, though this probably referred to Pinchbeck Bros.  

Harry Arthur died on 29 December 1940 at Sutton, Surrey, leaving £6,608.  His sons continued the firm, which was a neighbour of Herbert Housley.   He recalled that the Pinchbecks acted as London agents for several cutlery firms, including Housley.   When the business began to wind down, the brothers ‘only kept it going out of loyalty to their few, elderly employees’ (Housley, 1998¹).   The firm was listed until the early 1950s, but after the Arundel Street premises were demolished the Pinchbecks dissolved the firm in 1961.  The mark was a sceptre / Maltese Cross device.

¹ Housley, Herbert, Back to the Grindstone (Sheffield, 1998)