# Pocket knife, bone handle

> Carried by three grinders in turn, each scratching in his initials.

https://vitrine.themes.dev/collection/penknife/

- Made by: Merrin & Sons, Tenter Lane
- Date: About 1900
- Material: Steel, bone, brass
- Size: 8 cm closed
- Cost new: A shilling (staff price, fourpence)
- Came from: Found under the hull floor, 2012
- On view: The workshop, on the grinders’ bench

Found under the floorboards of the grinding hull when the building was repaired in 2012. The works sold pocket knives to its own grinders at a third of the shop price, and this one has three different sets of initials scratched into the bone.

We have traced two of them in the wage books: a W. Hollis, who started in 1897, and an E. Platt, who left for the army in 1915.