W. & S. Butcher (1830-1950) was one of the largest English cutlery and edge tool makers of the 19th century. The company was also one of the leading exporters of plane blades to the United States. A staggering 36 different Butcher plane iron and chip breaker marks have been identified, far more than any other edge tool maker of that era. The story of these marks has two parts: First, a company that developed one of the most respected names in English steel making. And second, the counterfeiters who tried to capitalize on that famous brand.
William and Samuel Butcher were born into the Sheffield cutlery trade in the late 1700s. William began making edge tools in 1819 in a small workshop on Eyre Street; three years later he expanded and began melting his own cast steel. Over the next few years, William was part of several brief partnerships (including one that would result in the famed "Wade & Butcher" mark used on razors for over 100 years). In 1830, the company took the brothers' names and became W. & S. Butcher.1
But by this point, Samuel was no longer in Sheffield. In 1827 he was listed as a merchant in New York's hardware district, where he lived with his American wife.2 William had launched his business just as the demand for cast steel tools was escalating. The brothers had identified the United States as a potentially lucrative market as early as 1822, when Samuel made his first trip to New York. Samuel would end up being the public face of W. & S. Butcher. (William was described as being a "strict disciplinarian" who lacked the "genial temperament of his brother.")3
By 1850, Butcher had expanded its manufacturing to multiple locations in Sheffield and was one of the city's most famous firms. The company had also expanded its U.S. operations, opening additional offices in Boston and Philadelphia. The scope and size of Butcher's U.S. activities is unknown. According to historian Geoffrey Tweedale, there are no surviving company records. And unfortunately, the company rarely advertised or published trade catalogs. Instead, Butcher relied on its agents to bolster its presence in the U.S.4
The agents of edge tool makers, also called travelers, worked in specific geographic areas, selling irons and other tools directly to retailers. As the U.S. grew over the 1800s, so did Butcher's sales force: to New Orleans, Chicago, and San Francisco.5 Agents weren't just salespeople. They helped their company strategize where to sell products and how to remain competitive. They also helped Samuel identify an elusive foe: counterfeiters.
England passed its first law regulating Sheffield maker's marks in 1624. The Company of Cutlers, a trade guild, was given the power to oversee and approve all marks used by cutlery and edge tool makers. As the number of Sheffield companies making steel products exploded during the 1800s (there were at least 200 by the end of the century), so did disputes over marks. As contemporary researchers put it: "No other hardware centre was subject to so much fraudulent marking as Sheffield; consequently, no other industrial town was so closely involved with strategies, both at a national and local (company) level, to combat counterfeiting."6 To live and work in Sheffield was to know whose mark was on what tool. Waiters at inns across England could supposedly identify a dining Sheffielder "at once by his trick of looking at the marks on the knives."7
The Butchers would have known about counterfeiting in the U.S. from the very beginning. The first known mention in a Sheffield newspaper related to counterfeiting in the U.S. is from 1825, three years after Samuel's first visit to the States.8 Butcher was involved in several mark-related lawsuits in Sheffield in the mid-1800s. But the firm's real fight against counterfeiting — or "piracy" as it was called at the time — took place across the Atlantic.
In 1855, an ad in a New York newspaper announced that Butcher had won $5,000 in damages against a German exporter that was selling "spurious files and chisels, purporting to be of the manufacture of the plaintiffs, and with the names and trademarks of the plaintiffs stamped on the article."9 In 1858, Samuel reported that the company had successfully defended itself in three counterfeiting “actions” in the U.S., and had another pending, "in which they had no doubt of success, against a large house at St. Louis." W. & S. Butcher, he said, “had done the best they could to enforce the law in the United States.”10
Many of Butcher's plane iron marks may be from counterfeiters. Making small changes to a mark (see below) was a common counterfeiting trick as forgers played juridical cat-and-mouse with a mark's owner. Where was a counterfeit Butcher plane blade made? It may have been made by machine in Germany. German firms claimed they could replicate any Sheffield mark on demand. It could have been made in Sheffield by an unaffiliated workshop and then stamped with a Butcher mark. Or it could have been made in the U.S. with English cast steel and a locally sourced blank.
By the time of the brother's deaths (Samuel in 1869, William in 1870) the company was still a dominant force, turning out "12 tons of files, 800 dozen razors, 600 dozen chisels and gouges, and 400 dozen plane irons" every week.11 But the Butcher's U.S. market was rapidly shrinking. America’s steel industry was coming into its own, and planemaking companies like Sandusky, Ohio Tool and Auburn Tool were producing tens of thousands of their own irons (albeit often with English cast steel).
Butcher made one final attempt at expanding into America. In the 1860s, it tried making steel railroad car wheels in Pennsylvania, but the company had difficulty replicating the high-quality cast steel it made in Sheffield.12 The revered Butcher name would change hands multiple times following William and Samuel's deaths before fading away in the mid 20th century.
The Marks
With no surviving company records, little is known about Butcher's various marks. #10 was used on edge tools until at least the 1910s. The company used #31 and #32 to show it had received royal warrants of appointment during the reigns of Queen Victoria (1837-1901) and King William IV (1830-37). The most commonly found marks are probably #17 and #19. The numbers on those marks (typically between 0-7 or 11) might have referred to the facility where the blade was made, the geographic area in the U.S. it was slated to be sold in, or the quality of the blade. Or they served some other function that’s no longer evident.
The Baldwin Tool Co. made planes and plane irons in Middletown, CT, from 1836-60. #33-#36 were probably made in Connecticut with imported Butcher cast steel. (Butcher also shared marks on saws sold by Pierre Alexander Lanauze, a New Orleans hardware dealer active from 1845-71.) There's also a report of an iron marked FRED STONES that is overstamped with a Butcher mark. And there’s a possible mark with a thistle, and a possible variation of the #23-#29 mark with a dog's head.
It's impossible to say which of the marks are genuine. Counterfeiters likely continued making "Butcher" plane blades long after the brothers died. There are undoubtably more variations — and more unique marks — still unrecorded. You can download a pdf of all the Butcher plane iron and chip breaker marks here.
Marks compiled by:
Abraham Hyatt: 6, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 24, 28
Seth Burchard: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 17, 20, 21, 22, 25, 30, 31, 32 (The Chronicle, vol. 31, no. 4, 1978 and vol. 44, no. 1, 1991)
William B. Hilton: 23, 29, 33, 34, 35, 36 (Plane Talk, vol. 3, no. 4, 1978)
Plane Talk: 27 (Plane Talk, vol. 8, no. 3, 1983)
Eric Gannicott: 26 (Plane Talk, vol. 9, no. 2, 1984)
Tweedale, Geoffrey. Giants of Sheffield Steel: The Men Who Made Sheffield the Steel Capital of the World, Sheffield City Libraries, 1986.
Tweedale, Geoffrey. "William and Samuel Butcher: Tool, Cutlery, and Steel Manufacturers of Sheffield by Geoffrey." WK Fine Tools, July, 2012, http://www.wkfinetools.com/huk/Butcher/history/hReview/03-History-Butcher.asp. Accessed 15 November 2023 at https://web.archive.org/web/20160403054919/http://wkfinetools.com/huk/butcher/history/hreview/01-History-Butcher.asp
Tweedale, 2012.
Tweedale, 2012.
Tweedale, 2012.
Higgins, David and Geoffrey Tweedale. "Asset or Liability? Trade Marks in the Sheffield Cutlery and Tool Trades." Business History, vol. 37, no. 3, 2006.
"Cutlery Marks." Sheffield and Rotherham Independent, 6 Jul 1870, pg. 4.
Higgins, 2006.
“Important to Hardware Dealers.” New York Daily Herald, 10 Aug 1855, p. 7. The ad names “Scheidt” as the defendant. Gustavus Scheidt was the managing agent at J. E. Bleckmann’s New York office at that time.
"Frauds Upon Manufacturers." Sheffield and Rotherham Independent, 24 Jul 1858, p. 9.
Tweedale, 2012.
Gordon, Robert. "The Origins of Early American Crucible Steelmaking: Little Competition to the Sheffield Masters." JOM, vol. 43, 1991.
Hi Abraham, Great story, and no doubt in another 100 years there will be articles about the how most of our "designer label " or such kit was actually pirated. I write becasue last week I was actually lucky enough to visit the Ken Hawley tool Collection https://www.hawleytoolcollection.com/index.php?sheffield-tool=Catalogues which is embedded in the Kelham Island Museum in Sheffield UK. I suspect that that team know a lot about the cutlery and file piracy angle and if you have never enquired it might be worth a look. Best regards and keep the stories coming. Now I need to go sharpen some irons for a Record No 50...