This page gives a fascinating history of button making in the UK:
https://www.austbuttonhistory.com/its-un-australian/the-wide-world-of-manufacturers/#UNITED_KINGDOM
There is no way you can tie your button to the specific year in which it was made, but the backmark (the maker’s name) can help by identifying the period during which that mark was used. What is the backmark on your button?
Hammond Turner & Dickinson This is the earliest backmark (1770-ish to 1815-ish).
John Dickinson was born in Chester in 1762. In 1777 (at the age of 15) he moved from Chester to Birmingham to become an apprentice to Samuel Hammond, button maker. His obituary says that “During the time of his servitude he conducted himself with so much propriety, and acquired such an ascendancy in the esteem and confidence of his master, that when it expired he was admitted into partnership with him, in connection with another gentleman.” That gentleman was John Turner and the two of them entered into a co-partnership in 1809 under the name Hammond Turner & Dickenson. Mr Hammond is not mentioned in the agreement they both signed (he died, in 1825, at the age of 85 so he may have already retired by 1809), but his name lived on. I suspect there were two reasons for this: first, his name was well known in the Birmingham button trade and, second, John Turner was his nephew, the son of John Turner who married Samuel’s sister Mary. The agreement says that “the said John Turner and John Dickinson have for several years now last past carried on and exercised the trade and business of button makers in partnership together under certain articles of partnership which expired on the thirty first day of October one thousand eight hundred and seven” so the backmark could have been used from the start of Dickinson’s achieving partner status and Turner’s association with Hammond. In 1775, Samuel Hammond was included in Swinney’s Birmingham Directory as a button maker at 55 Snow Hill. A document dated 1790 contains a plan showing the plot of land on Snow Hill that Mr Dickinson wished to purchase: it lay between premises belonging to Mr Turner and premises belonging to Mr Hammond. The partnership called Hammond Turner & Sons later traded from 99-100 Snow Hill
Hammond Turner & Sons is the longest-lasting backmark associated with the company (1815-ish to 1930s-ish). John Dickinson retired from the partnership in about 1815 and the name was changed to Hammond Turner & Sons. That name continued to be used for the rest of the 19th century, as far as I can tell, but it doesn’t appear that many buttons were made after about the 1860s. The company’s name was used by a manufacturer of plate metal goods for a while, until as late as the mid-20th century.
Hammond Turner and Bate(s): used in the 1840s and 1850s by the company which operated out of Bread Street, Manchester.
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