| AdminHistory | Sir Frederick Thorpe Mappin, 1st Baronet, known as Frederick Mappin, was born in Sheffield on 16 May 1821.
Mappin worked for his father's cutlery company from the age of thirteen, running it alone after his father's death in 1841. In 1851, he became the youngest ever Master Cutler, but after a dispute with his younger brother, he left the firm, which later became part of Mappin and Webb. In 1854, he was elected to Sheffield Town Council as a Liberal, stepping down in 1857. In the 1860s, Mappin became a director of the Sheffield Gas and Light Company, and of the Midland Railway.
Having left his father's cutlery firm, Mappin, in a partnership with William Matthews established on 1 January 1860, he purchased Thomas Turton and Sons, file, tool and spring manufacturers, for an initial price of £99, 656 16s. 11d. (the actual sum paid was £55, 843 14s. 4d., after various deductions to legal beneficiaries and the inclusion of certain property in part payment was taken into account). Under Mappin, Turtons led the mechanisation of Sheffield's cutlery trades, but its introduction of the first grinding machine for file-cutting in 1865 led to a major strike, at a time when there was much opposition to the challenge mechanisation represented to Sheffield's well-organised handicraft trades. Union resistance was broken, but the pace of technological change was by no means rapid and Turtons continued to employ much hand labour into the 1890s. Mappin also turned Turtons into the leading manufacturers of railway springs, distributed from its depots in London, Paris and New York.
In 1876, Mappin was re-elected to the Town Council, and served as the Mayor of Sheffield in 1877-8. In 1878, he was a juror at the Paris Universal Exhibition, and was awarded the Légion d'honneur. At the 1880 UK general election, he was elected as Member of Parliament for East Retford, while remaining on Sheffield Town Council until 1883.
Mappin was a major supporter of the creation of the Sheffield Technical School.
In the 1880s, he gave a bequest to create the Mappin Art Gallery.
He died on 19 March 1910. |
| CustodialHistory | This photocopy was donated to Sheffield Archives by a private individual in July 1985. |