However, Joseph Gillott was born in Sheffield about three months before the present century commenced. His parents _were_ poor, but they managed to give him a good plain education, and they taught him self-reliance. They taught him, too, to train and cultivate the fine faculty of observation with which he was naturally endowed. In very early life, we are told, he, by forging and grinding the blades of pen-knives, contributed greatly to the income of the parental household. It is said that even at a very early age, his quick perception and his acute nervous organisation enabled him to produce much finer work than others of far greater experience in the same trade, whose obtuseness had kept them in a state of comparative drudgery all their lives. When he became of age, and was "out of his time," the cutlery trade in Sheffield was very much depressed, and he came to Birmingham, hoping to obtain employment in a trade which, owing to a caprice of fashion, was just then in an inflated condition. This was the business of making steel buckles, and other articles of polished steel for personal adornment. In this he was very successful, and soon after his arrival in the town, he took a small house in Bread Street, a little way down on the right from Newhall Street, and here he started business for himself. He had no capital, but he had great skill. Mr. S.A. Goddard, who used to buy from him, tells me that he made very excellent goods, and "came for his money every week." He was a very excellent workman, and possessing as he did the native perception of fitness which we call "taste," he soon obtained abundance of orders, and became prosperous.