William Gregory Ibberson (known as ‘Billy’), son of John William Ibberson and his wife, Annie Ping Ibberson, was born in Sheffield on 4 January 1902. He attended King Edward VII School in Sheffield and then undertook an associateship engineering course at the University of Sheffield, graduating in 1922. After this, he studied at the University of Grenoble in France from 1922 to 1923.

He joined the family cutlery company, George Ibberson and Co. Ltd in 1923. He went on to become a partner in the business in 1928. The business was subsequently increasingly managed by W. G. Ibberson and under his leadership the company started to diversify the types of products it manufactured after the Second World War. On the death of his father, he became the manager and sole proprietor of the company from 1954 to 1970. In 1970, George Ibberson & Co. Ltd merged with the Eardley Group of Companies. It was then sold to British Syphon Industries in 1974. W. G. Ibberson remained a director in the business until his resignation in 1982.

As well as being a businessman and cutlery manufacturer, W. G. Ibberson was involved in a number of local organisations, societies and clubs, and was as a result a respected and well-known figure in Sheffield. He notably became a Freeman of the Company of Cutlers in Hallamshire in 1944 and served as Master Cutler in 1954 to 1955. In addition to this, he was a founding member of Sheffield Junior Chamber of Commerce and was elected as President in 1929. He went on to serve as the President of the Sheffield Chamber of Commerce in 1952 and remained a member of the Council until 1988. He was also an active member of Sheffield Cutlery Manufacturers’ Association, and helped establish the Cutlery Research Council, later known as Cutlery and Allied Trades Research Association (CATRA) in 1952.

In later life, he worked tirelessly as Chairman of the Council for the Conservation of Sheffield Antiquities Ltd to raise the funds necessary to restore Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet, which opened to the public as a museum in 1970. Sheffield Assay Office appointed him to the prestigious position of Guardian in 1967, and he served as Chairman of the Guardians in 1976.

W. G. Ibberson was a dedicated Freemason having been initiated in Concordia Lodge, No. 4480 in 1928, where he served as Worshipful Master in 1941. Over the years, he joined various other craft lodges, masonic orders and associations primarily based in Sheffield, and served as a member of the General Board of Purposes of the United Grand Lodge of England.

He married Lillian Josephine Fretwell Skinner in 1934. The couple lived together at Crossgates, 26 Lawson Road, Sheffield. They had four sons together, William Robert (born 1936), John Skinner (born 1939), Charles David (born 1941) and Michael Henry (born 1946).

In his leisure time, W. G. Ibberson was a keen photographer and amateur filmmaker, and a number of the films that he made showing family life in Sheffield, and documenting processes used to make cutlery at George Ibberson & Co. Ltd are now held by Yorkshire Film Archive. Remembered as a gregarious man and raconteur, he died suddenly on 12 June 1988, aged 86.