No. 8543—13th June, 1840—Joseph Wolverson, locksmith, William Rawlett, latch maker, both of Willenhall. “Locks and latches.”
No. 8903—29 March, 1841.—James Tildesley, of Willenhall, factor, and Joseph Sanders, of Wolverhampton, Lock manufacturer. “Locks.”
No. 10611—15th April, 1845.—George Carter, of Willenhall, jobbing smith. “Locks and latches.
No. 12604—8th May, 1849.—Samuel Wilkes, of Wednesfield Heath, brass founder. “Knobs, handles, and spindles for the same, and locks.”
[There are patents in the name of Samuel Wilkes, at Darlaston, ironfounder, in 1840, for hinges; and for vices in the same year. In 1851, Samuel Wilkes, of Wolverhampton, iron founder, took out a patent for hinges. In 1845, Samuel Wilkes, of Wolverhampton, brass founder, took out a patent for kettles. The Wilkes’ family hereabouts are manifestly as ingenious as they are numerous.]
At the present time there are some 90 factories and 143 workshop employers in Willenhall, besides nine factories and 47 workshops in the Short Heath district. The most important firms in the lock trade are Messrs. Carpenter and Tildesley, H. and T. Vaughan, William Vaughan, John Minors and Sons, J. Waine and Sons, Beddow and Sturmey, Legge and Chilton, and Enoch Tonks and Sons. In the casting trades are John Harper and Co., Ltd. (by far the largest concern), Wm. Harper, Son, and Co., C. and L. Hill, H. and J. Hill, T. Pedley, H. and T. Vaughan (under the style of D. Knowles and Sons), and Arthur Tipper. In this branch of the industry women are largely employed, and children to a slight extent, in attending to light hand and power presses. Female labour is now utilised in the making of parts of machine-made locks (a method of production introduced during the last generation), and for varnishing, painting, and bronzing both the machine and the hand-made goods.
The rate of wages for workmen in the lock trade now ranges from 20s. to 35s. per week, yielding an average of about 29s. Of the wares produced there are probably 300 varieties, many of them in several sizes each, the gross output running into thousands of dozens per week, and so great is their diversity that they range
from field padlocks to ponderous prison locks, and the selling prices vary from 1d. to 30s. each. They are exported all over the world, finding good markets in Australasia and South Africa.
Tradition forbids that we should omit here the two stock illustrations of the fact that lock-making ranks among the notoriously ill-paid industries. One is the familiar exaggeration that if a Willenhall locksmith happens to let fall the lock he is making, he never stoops to pick up because he can make another in less time.
The other is the hackneyed anecdote of the late G. B. Thorneycroft, who was once taunted with the sneer that some padlocks of local manufacture would only lock once; and who promptly retorted that as they had been bought at twopence each, it would be “a shame if they did lock twice” at such starvation prices of production. But Willenhall’s contributions to the hardware production of the Black Country are by no means limited to this endless variety of locks, some for doors and gates, some for carpet bags and travelling trunks, some for writing portfolios and jewel caskets; but extends to lock furniture and door furniture, latches, door bolts, hasps and keys, hooks and steel vermin traps, grid-irons and box-iron stands, files and wood-screws, ferrules and iron-tips for Lancashire clogs; and other small oddments of the hardware trade.