Sheffield Daily Telegraph – Thursday 22 August 1929

Henry Bessemer And Co.

Sheffield Works of Famous Firm to Close Down.

According to a reliable authority the works of Messrs. Henry Bessemer and Co., Ltd., steel manufacturers, of Carlisle Street, Sheffield, will be closed in the near future, and the operations which have hitherto been carried on there will be conducted at the works of Messrs. J. Baker and do. (Rotherham), Ltd., at Kilnhurst.

This step, when taken, will mark the passing from the industrial life of the city of a firm which had a world-wide reputation, and which revolutionised the steel trade of the world, for was at the Carlisle Street works that the late Sir Henry Bessemer, in 1856, first demonstrated the commercial value of his process of putting a blast through molten steel to clear it of its impurities.

The Bessemer process, as it became known, marked the beginning of what has come to be known as the steel age. The firm at one lime had works Bolton in Lancashire. These works have been closed for some time, and latterly operations have only been conducted at Sheffield, where some 350 hands have been employed.

At the Carlisle Street Works there are two open hearth melting furnaces with mills and forges where steel forgings, aides, and tyres for railways have been principally turned out. Recently the firm has been absorbed by Messrs. J. Baker and Co.

A representative of the latter firm yesterday assured the “Telegraph” that the closing down of the old firm of Bessemer’s was “inevitable.” In reply to a query as to what was to be the fate of the staff—whether they would be absorbed at the Kilnhurst firm —our informant added that that would be a matter of the state of trade. “At present, however,” he added, “our men at Kilnhurst are on short time, but I have no doubt that if trade improves we shall be able to do something.”