He was educated at a local school held in a garret, and was apprenticed at the age of fourteen to Earl, Horton, & Co., factors, of Orchard Place, In 1831, his employers engaged in the manufacture of files and table cutlery, taking an establishment in Rockingham Street, which they styled the Hallamshire Works.

Nonetheless he did take over the company's factoring business with the help of a loan for £500 thanks to the backing of his father and uncle and for several years travelled the country selling goods.

Brown, from a distant inspection of La Gloire, came to the conclusion that the armoured plates used in protecting her might have been rolled instead of hammered.

Palmerston's visit was followed in April 1863 by one from the lords of the admiralty, who saw a plate rolled to twelve inches thick and fifteen to twenty feet long.

His establishment, styled the Atlas Works, covered nearly thirty acres, and increased until it gave employment to over four thousand artisans.

He undertook the manufacture of armour plates, ordnance forgings, railway bars, steel springs, buffers, tires, and axles, supplied Sheffield with iron for steel-making purposes, and was the first successfully to develop the Bessemer process, and to introduce into Sheffield the manufacture of steel rails.

[6] Between 1866 and 1869, he funded the building of All Saints Church, Brightside, Sheffield, designed by Flockton and Abbott to accommodate the increasing numbers of employees at Atlas Ironworks.