Tag: W.H. Hatfield

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Places

“That’s not silver. It’s stainless steel, and it’s made in Sheffield.”

Savoy Theatre, alongside the Savoy Theatre, Strand, London

I had to make a hurried and brief visit to London. There is somebody you need to meet, said my friend. Come straightaway. The fact I heard this at 9am, and had only been asleep for four hours, made it an interesting journey. And so, hungover, I found myself waiting outside the world famous Savoy Hotel in The Strand. I would like to say the meeting was in the hotel, but it would take place in a nearby Costa Coffee.

I watched London rush by and looked up at the hotel entrance. “Fantastic engineering, isn’t it?” said a voice behind me. “It’s stainless steel,” said the member of staff. “Do you know they once found a dead body on top of the glass canopy?” I didn’t, and later found out it was true. In 1935, a down-and-out, one of the unemployed, exhausted, and defeated, had painfully climbed on to the shining stainless steel canopy over the entrance to the hotel to die of starvation.

And this got me thinking. Stainless steel. Was there a Sheffield connection? On my way home, I found out that there was.

“Isn’t it lovely?” exclaimed a girl gazing at the entrance to the adjacent Savoy Theatre. “Fancy a theatre front made of silver!” The year was 1931, and her boyfriend knew better. “That’s not silver. It’s stainless steel, and it’s made in Sheffield.”

But he was only partly right. The famous Sheffield product was not, strictly speaking, stainless steel, but a development of it – chromium nickel steel – which could be polished up to a degree that eclipsed the brilliance of polished silver and retained its sheen in any atmosphere.

‘Staybrite’ was a product of Thomas Firth and Sons, and in the 1920s and 1930s was making its mark in London. It was used for the imposing entrance to the Oxford Street Corner House, and combined with glass, there were the massive entrances to the Savoy Hotel and Savoy Taylor’s Guild, the beautiful rotating doors of the Strand Palace Hotel, and glittering turnstiles at the Olympia.

And there were examples abroad. Including the main entrance and ticket barriers of Geneva railway station, ornamental gates at Berne, and the doors of the Palais de Justice at Lausanne.

It was all manufactured in Sheffield.

Harry Brearley was the man credited with the invention of ‘rustless steel,’ but he left Brown Firth Laboratories in 1915 after a disagreement. It was his successor, Dr W.H. Hatfield who created the so-called “18/8” – Staybrite, still the most widely used alloy of this type.

The testing of it was rigorous. It was buried in a garden for six months and came up gleaming as new. It was attached to a vessel bound on a nine months’ voyage and dragged through the waves for that long period, hauled aboard, and found to be bright as polished silver.

Its use is ubiquitous now, but how did the Savoy Hotel come to get this Sheffield product? It was all about art-deco. A young architect, Howard Robertson, wrote to the hotel pitching for work, and in 1929 he revealed his most famous and prominent design – The Savoy’s iconic ‘Staybrite’ sign which runs the width of Savoy Court.

Sheffield-made ‘Staybrite’ canopy, and the figure of Count Peter of Savoy

©2022 David Poole. All Rights Reserved.

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Streets

“We have indeed seen Sheffield burn.”

“We have indeed seen Sheffield burn. Many parts of our city have been destroyed; our peacetime occupations have been replaced by a complete conversion to wartime conditions. We must rebuild, reorganise, and reabsorb the men who are now away fighting. What a task! It will not be done by talking. It can only be achieved by enterprise, organisation, and very hard work. Also, we shall need good fortune and that which happens elsewhere will determine in large measure our own opportunities. If this war has taught us one thing, it is that our city is simply a cog in the wheel which is our country, and that our country is a part, and no mean part, of the mechanism of the civilised world.” – Dr W.H. Hatfield, Sheffield, 1943.

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People

“War and work, work and war, and it is said it might have been so different.”

  • Sheffield Burns, by Dr W.H. Hatfield, was delivered to the publisher, J.W. Northend, in 1943. Photo: DJP/2021.

On the nights of 11th and 13th December 1940, a German attack on Sheffield lasted for many hours, and cinemas, stores, and shops, were wrecked, and some churches damaged. Two days later, on the 15th and 16th, Sheffield was again attacked with material results, explosions, and a considerable number of fires observed.

“Between 3.30 and 4.00 a.m. on 13th December 1940, from our terrace we watched Sheffield burn. Sheffield is my native city. I felt then that the rest of my life must be devoted to helping to restore and rebuild the fortunes of the city.”

These words were written by Dr W. H. Hatfield in the introduction of his book, Sheffield Burns, published in 1943, in which he idealises and hopes the city will have a brighter future.

“My father desired to rest with his father, and I remember subsequently on a quiet wintry afternoon standing before their tombstone and reading the dates on which my grandfather and my father passed away, and then realising that I could from the inscriptions before me, predict the approximate date upon which I, given good fortune, would also pass away.”

Hatfield gave the final proofs of his book to his publisher on 13th October 1943 and died four days later, much sooner than he had probably anticipated.

“He died through strain and overwork in furthering our war effort,” said his wife Edith at the time. “Working unflinchingly at all hours, day and night for four years without rest or holiday, for our armaments and aircraft industry.”

  • William H. Hatfield, author of numerous technical papers on many branches of metallurgy, in particular rust, cast iron and acid and heat-resistant steels. Photo: University of Sheffield.

William Herbert Hatfield was born in 1882, and worked in the laboratory of Henry Bessemer and Co, while at the same time studying at University College, Sheffield, where he became Doctor of Metallurgy in 1913. Later he became a metallurgist at John Crowley and Co and was subsequently appointed director of the Brown-Firth Research Laboratories, and later with the board of Thomas Firth and John Brown.

It was Hatfield who discovered 18/8 stainless steel in 1924 which happens to be the most widely used stainless steel in the world today. For all his efforts, he is sadly overlooked by history, except for the Hatfield Memorial Lecture, held every December by the University of Sheffield.

© 2021 David Poole. All Rights Reserved.