In the 1860s, Joseph Hudson, who was a Birmingham trained toolmaker, converted his washroom at St. Marks Square, which he rented for one shilling and six pence per week, into a workshop. Here he did anything he could to supplement the family income from watch repairing to cobbling shoes. For reasons now lost in the mists of antiquity, whistles were his passion. Throughout the 1870s he made numerous types and designs.