Thomas W Ward Ltd, coal, metal & machinery merchants, Albion Works, Savile Street, Sheffield.

            Aey up, Thomas Ward was born in 1853, started work at 15, became a coal merchant and then, because the time was right for it, a scrap metal dealer in Sheffield. In the early 1870s there was a big demand for scrap metal. There were many big engineering projects and Thomas Ward developed an expertise in dismantling big structures, ships for instance. Thomas Ward Ltd of Sheffield opened its ship dismantling department in 1894 and soon became the largest supplier of scrap metal to the growing steel industry. The keynote was efficiency - everything on board a ship was dismantled and resold. Ships' fittings and equipment were sold at the showroom in Sheffield. Books, lamps, toilets and carpets were all dismantled. It is said that even the timber was turned into garden furniture.

He had breakers' yards at ports round the country and became the biggest scrap dealer in the country, taking apart old warships and redundant luxury liners. These included the Olympic, sister ship to the Titanic, which was broken up at Inverkeithing. The Olympic's Twenty-one light candleabra that sat on the plinth at the foot of the whites swans staircase balustrade, eventually found itself installed into Thomas Ward and Sons head office, in the Albion Works in Sheffield. When Thomas Ward Ltd was taken over by Rio Tinto in the early 1980s, all the fittings from the Albion works disappeared during this transition period, including the Twenty-one light candelabra from the Olympic.

During the First World War, Thomas Ward's was heavily engaged in war activities. There was a shortage of horses which had been sent to the Front and in 1916 Ward leased an elephant (and a man to look after it) from a circus. Circuses had been stood down for the duration of the war. The firm had the elephant for a couple of years, stabling her near the factory and using her for hauling heavy loads of steel around Sheffield. The elephant's name was Lizzie and records exist that are full of anecdotes about her - eating a schoolboy's cap, putting her trunk through a kitchen window to help herself, and pushing over a traction engine. The bizarre sight of the elephant in the streets of Sheffield, led to the local saying of  'Done up like Tommy Ward's elephant', a term used to describe anyone laden down with heavy bags.

Thomas Ward Ltd, continued to trade in the engineering industry until the early 1980s.

Taken on: August 15, 2008

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1951 « less

Sets appears in: • Arty Stuff • Britain in the 1950s more » • Festival of Britain 1951 • Retro Stuff. • South Yorkshire « less

Groups appears in: • Sheffield • Nostalgia more » • !Catchy Colors • Vintage Advertising • 1950s • It's Grim Up North • One Of A Kind • "Story Behind a Photo" • It's Grim Up North - Back in the day • VINTAGE ENGLAND - EPHEMERA • Sheffield Metal • Of a Bygone Age. (Retro Stuff) • Vintage In Colour « less

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