This firm was founded in 1720. William Allday, Sr. was a maker of bellows for blacksmith forges.
Alldays & Onions Ltd. was formed by a merger of two old companies that went back to 1650. They were founded in Birmingham, England in 1885, by a merger between William Allday & Co. and the bellows maker John Onions to form the Alldays & Onions Pneumatic Engineering Co. Ltd. in 1889.
By 1936, Alldays and Onions, Ltd. was owned by Mitchell Cotts and Co.
"In the year 1885, a company known as Alldays & Onions, Ltd., was formed, with the object of amalgamating the old-established businesses of John C. Onions, Ltd., and William Allday & Sons. This company was reorganized in the year 1889 under its present title. The authorized Share Capital consists of 50,000 "A" Six per Cent. Cumulative Preference Shares of £1 each, 100,000 "B" Six per Cent. Cumulative Participating Preference Shares of £1 each, and 125,000 Ordinary Shares of £1 each. The whole of the "A" Preference and 75,000 of the Ordinary Shares have been issued and except as to £90 are fully paid. There are also £80,000 Four and a-Half per Cent. Mortgage Debentures which can be redeemed at any time only at the option of the Company and at 108 per cent.
The Directors are: Edward Tailby, Chairman; Simon Onions, and William Allday and Edmund Allday, Managing Directors, who are, and for many years have been in control of the business, thus preserving continuity of management. From the commencement, the business has steadily and continuously expanded.
The company's original business has been much developed, and now covers the manufacture of motor lorries, cars and vans, cycles and motor cycles, complete outfits for foundries, engineers' and railway workshops, pneumatic power hammers, drop and lifting stamps, oil, gas, and fuel furnaces, hardening shop equipment’s, Roots blowers, blacksmiths' shops, exhaust and blowing fans, smiths' hearths, portable forges, anvils and vices, cranes, pulley blocks, bellows, etc., etc." (Quote from 1916.)
Information Sources
- More history and machine information can be found at Grace’s Guide.
- The Tractor & Construction Plant Wiki has a page on Alldays & Onions Ltd.
- The New Statesman, V6, 15 Jan., 1916, pg. 360