
Anyone who has picked up an old saw, plane, or knife soon looks
for a trade mark or maker’s name. These can identify and
sometimes date an artefact. But one often wants to know more
about the history of the manufacturer or individual. Reference
books and other published sources – such as newspapers and
directories – can sometimes provide a lead. But they do not
usually give much detail. Ideally, business records – letters,
accounts ledgers, and old pattern books – should help. But not
many tool and cutlery enterprises have left an archive trail. So
where does one look?
In the late 1970s, I pondered this question, when I was
researching the 19th century Sheffield cutlery and tool trades.
I tried trawling through consecutive years of one Sheffield
newspaper, but soon gave this up as too laborious. Trade
journals seemed to offer a more focused source, so I began
looking at leading Victorian periodicals, such as The Engineer
and Engineering. These were useful and the volumes were often
indexed.
However, the space devoted to hand tools and cutlery
was inevitably limited. Perhaps surprisingly, Sheffield did not
have its own trade journal, but I soon discovered that
specialist iron and hardware journals had been published in
England since the late 19th century. One in particular looked
promising.
That
journal was The Ironmonger. The only place it seemed to be
available in a complete run was the British Library’s Newspaper
Division at Colindale, north London. That was convenient in one
respect, because I lived in London. But Colindale was on the
distant reaches of the underground railway and a visit involved
a three-hour round trip.
The Newspaper Division was an Aladdin’s Cave of newspapers and
journals (put simply, its miles of shelving held runs of almost
every British newspaper and journal ever published). But it was
always a forbidding place to work. I once heard the head of the
Division describe working there as like being ‘exiled to
Siberia’.
The building was more akin to a depository than a
library and in those days was devoid of facilities like a café
or even a drinks machine. Worse, it was set in a residential
suburb which was similarly devoid of shops and cafés. Volumes
could only be ordered from the stacks a few at a time and
photocopying was expensive.
It was soon evident, though, that The Ironmonger was a mine of
information on tools, cutlery, and general hardware products. I
opened my first volume and almost immediately in the issue
dated 30 May 1863 discovered a detailed account of Mappin Bros –
one of Sheffield’s leading cutlery factories. A quick look
through the other volumes on my table showed that it was a
journal thick with news items and advertisements on tools and
cutlery.
It
was like a mine in other respects, too, since it was also
apparent that consulting its pages would involve a lot of hard
digging. The issues were bound into volumes that were squat,
bulky, and often covered only a few months.
Scanning every issue
of more than a decade’s run of the journal would be a serious
undertaking. Inevitably, I sampled the journal and, after
turning up lots of useful information and references, turned my
attention to other sources. I always promised myself that one
day I would return to The Ironmonger, though I did not think it
would be another thirty years before I did so.
In that period, much has changed. Computers and digitization
have made 19th century newspapers more accessible, so that the
extensive trawls
of
hard copy Sheffield newspapers I conducted at Colindale have
largely become unnecessary. Indeed, Colindale library no longer
exists. The British Library has abandoned it and dispersed its
stock. Sadly, The Ironmonger has not been digitized and it
remains a frustrating journal to consult, because so few
libraries have a run.
However, I was recently able to re-acquaint myself with this
journal after tracking down another set at the Museum of English
Rural Life at Reading University. To look along The Ironmonger
shelves at Reading is to be staggered by the sheer bulk of the
journal. Not only are the volumes big and heavy (see photo
above), but the run seems almost endless, spanning two bays of
shelves.
I did not have time to count every volume, but the
number certainly exceeds 200. The scale of this publishing
undertaking generated a history of its own, which can be
usefully explored before assessing The Ironmonger as a
source.
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