Book - A tale of day to day life in Sheffield

IN years to come Sheffield historians will recount that on this day in 2012 a book was published which does exactly what it says on the cover.

Just as the title suggests, The Sheffield Book of Days takes the reader through every day of the year, with each day plucked from a different year.

Written by Margaret Drinkall, it features hundreds of interesting snippets of information and tales each gleaned from the vaults of the city archives.

Featuring original research and detailing many incidents that have never before been published, it makes an ideal read for those who prefer to dip in and out.

Despite not being a Sheffielder herself, Margaret, a Rotherham lass, delves deeply into events from varying periods in the city’s history.

And the book includes events which have had a major impact on the religious and political development of the city as well as quirky, eccentric, amusing and important incidents and facts.

Some involve matters of national importance, such as the Coronation of George IV, and there are also local incidents including the Sheffield Outrages and accounts of various riots.

There are also amusing incidents picked up by the newspapers of the time.

Articles include one detailing the punishments dished out to young boys who dared to play ‘trip’ during Divine service and an outbreak of people being bitten by ‘mad dogs’.

The book covers events recorded in Sheffield from as far back as the 13th century to 1940.

Margaret said in order to write it, she trawled through old newspapers and council minutes in pursuit of the most interesting and unusual stories.

And she enjoyed the laborious task much more than you might think.

“I was in my element going through the archives,” she confessed.

“I had to stop myself getting sidetracked because I’d be reading one story and then stumble on something else.”

She recalls there was no shortage of unusual material.

For example on April 15, 1899, the dead body of a young whale which had been captured in the River Trent could be seen in the yard of the Green Dragon at Attercliffe.

The whale had been spotted near the mouth of the River Idle close to West Stock a few days previously.

The spectacle drew a large crowd of onlookers eager to catch a glimpse of the monster.

The earliest event chronicled in the book happened on August 10, 1297, when a Charter was granted to the people of Sheffield by Thomas de Furnival.

He obviously held local people in high regard, calling them ‘my free tenants of the town of Sheffield’ and he gave their heirs ‘all the tofts, lands and holdings which they hold of me’ at the fixed annual rent of £3.8.9¼d.

The book records how Sheffield has had its share of famous visitors over the years, like Picasso who came here briefly for the second World Peace Congress in 1950.

Margaret also discovered that on August 2, 1572 the Earl of Shrewsbury wrote a letter to Queen Elizabeth complaining about one of his prisoners.

That prisoner, a certain Mary Queen of Scots, was at the time was being held captive in the city.

Margaret also recalls people who, unlike Mary, visited the city of their own accord.

She said: “Charles Blondin came here and did a tight rope walk over New Valley Gardens and the famous circus act Barnumand Bailey came here in 1899.

“The circus came with a freak show that would never be allowed today. It had a giant nearly eight foot tall and a Japanese lady whose act involved doing things with her feet that people normally do with their hands.”

The author also records some of the more tragic episodes from our city’s past.

Stories like the case of George Needham, an 11-year-old boy who died in 1853.

“George had been playing in a workshop with a couple of friends when he climbed up a ladder to get something and his clothes caught on the shaft,” Margaret explains.

“He was whirled around and later died of his injuries.

“At the inquest it emerged that he was meant to be being supervised by the 17-year-old workshop owner’s son and it’s then you realise how young these children were and how hard life must have been for them.”

On December 6, 1848, the Sheffield Times reported a woman’s unfortunate mistake.

The story explains how the chief constable of police was returning from a meeting when he was accosted by a prostitute in the street.

They started heading towards the Town Hall, but she became suspicious and walked into a shop where the owner let slip the chief constable’s identity.

At this point she let off a stream of abuse and fled.

Two constables were sent after her and she was dragged before the courts and sent to prison for 21 days.

Margaret, who has a Masters degree in history, says taken together the events create a unique picture of the city.

“You get a glimpse into the past and an idea of what everyday life was like for people.”

Since retiring Margaret has become a full-time writer.

A keen local historian, her previous books include Rotherham Workhouse, Murder and Crime in Rotherham, Murder and Crime in Sheffield and Sheffield Crimes.

The Sheffield Book of Days, published by The History Press, is out now, priced £9.99.

From: http://www.thestar.co.uk/news/sheffield-s-history-a-tale-of-day-to-day-life-in-sheffield-1-4632670

Book - Crime pays in 2012 (Sheffield)

BOMB attacks, uprisings and infanticide in Sheffield?

Eeeh, says Margaret Drinkall, it’s all good fun...

“I was up at 5.30am this morning,” enthuses the 65-year-old historian. “I couldn’t sleep. I’d got to a point researching my latest book where a chap who killed his mistress was facing trial. I wanted to know what happened. So, there I was, cup of tea, dressing gown, going through these 19th century newspapers.”

And what did happen?

“He was hanged,” she nods. “Fascinating. Even if no-one read my books and no publishers wanted them any more, I think I would carry on researching. I love it.”

No-one reading is perhaps not something she need worry about.

For, as Margaret’s 10th tome is released, the former Rotherham Council volunteer co-ordinator is fast establishing her name as South Yorkshire’s premier historical crime writer.

Her latest offering, Yorkshire Villains, Rogues, Rascals And Reprobates, is a whiz through 19th century crime committed in Yorkshire taking in everything from Ecclesall child murder to Chartist uprisings in Waingate, from the outrageous Spence Broughton to the Sheffield Outrages.

And, coming on the back of her previous books – including Sheffield Crimes and Sheffield Workhouse – it looks set to be her best-seller so far.

Perhaps little wonder.

Here the reader can learn about an 1840 armed uprising where a band of Sheffield workers planned to storm the town hall, murder watchmen and establish a Chartist stronghold. Or one can find out how, in 1861, Bridget O’Rourke, of Acorn Street, was woken by a parcel being flung into her bedroom window. It was a bomb - one of the earliest acts of the Sheffield Outrages.

There’s also highway robberies, counterfeiting and treason.

“I have no idea why people enjoy reading about these things,” says mother-of-two Margaret, of Meadow Street, Rotherham. “But I do know I’m one of those people. I suppose we’re attracted to the gruesome – and there’s not many places as gruesome as Victorian England.

“I remember being driven past Armley prison when I was a little girl and my aunt telling me it was where they hanged people. I was intrigued from then on.

“I went back recently to take photos for a book about Leeds crime and I was so excited. I felt like I imagine some women do when they go shopping.”

And for the future? There’s more history for Margaret, who achieved a master’s degree in the subject through the Open University in 2008.

She’s got another four books commissioned for 2012 – including a rather less gruesome Rotherham ‘then and now’ project – and after that she hopes to do more.

“It’s the best job,” she says. “It can be sad, of course, when you’re thinking, for example, of those women who felt they had to kill their babies because they were born out of wedlock but when you stumble on something exciting like that Chartist uprising, it really is a lot of...yes, fun.”

Yorkshire Villains, Rogues, Rascals and Reprobates, published by The History Press, is in bookshops now priced £9.99.

From: http://www.thestar.co.uk/community/the-diary/crime_pays_in_2012_1_4118581

 

Book - A glimpse of life as it was in Victorian workhouses (Sheffield)

IN Victorian times the workhouse was a word that carried dread. There was a stigma attached to anyone who was admitted to a workhouse and once inside conditions were extremely harsh.

“Initially people who went into workhouses were seen as lazy idle scroungers and this would deter people from going in. Some would rather starve on the outside than go into a workhouse,” says Margaret Drinkall, author of Sheffield Workhouse.

Although it was the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act which abolished systems of poor relief and established workhouses throughout England and Wales, they had existed as far back as Elizabethan times and the book cites material from accounts of the town trustees in 1567 to Fir Vale workhouse in the 1900s.

Funded by ratepayers, the main workhouses in Sheffield were on Kelham Street and at Fir Vale, along with Pitsmoor referred to as a school but where children were kept, and Hollow Meadows, a farm which was intended to provide the workhouse with produce but became a place for test labour of able-bodied inmates,

The records of the Sheffield Workhouse were destroyed in the Sheffield Blitz, but the author has used archive material, newspaper reports and the remaining guardian minutes from 1890 to capture something of the lives of inmates as well as the work of the Board of Guardians.

Sheffield was hostile to the 1834 act and resented having to pay to set up workhouses and were not happy with the Board of Guardians, elected on a yearly basis. The guardians were an argumentative lot, according to Drinkall, often defying the Local Government Board and at loggerheads with the work staff, or officers.

But it was the inmates themselves who most interested the author. “One of the drawbacks, though, is the voices of the people were not heard. The only time names were mentioned was when they were punished for bad behaviour. I would like to have known more about them.

“One of the things I enjoyed researching was reading the Master’s Book, the letters he received and sent out. For example, there was an application on behalf of a Mrs Shaw who was a widow living with her son and his wife. The letter said she had worked all her life, taken in washing, and never in her life asked for parish relief but the son had fallen ill and there was no money. That showed it was ordinary people who went in there, people down on their luck.”

Most of the notes and letters confirm how hard life in the workhouse was.

“The conditions were terrible, especially the food. But at least there was food and children were taught to read and write. A lot of the kids had been almost feral when they arrived The guardians worried about them and came up with the idea of emigration to Canada or Australia of orphans,” says Drinkall. “I often wonder about how much the children understood what was happening to them.”

Life was pretty grim for the officers too. “They were on duty 24/7 and one of the biggest bones of contention among staff was that they had to ask permission from the Master to go out. It must have been demeaning for people like schoolteachers and they must have seen themselves as inmates.”

One way in which the Sheffield guardians showed enlightenment was the decision in the 1890s that the workhouses should run on hospital lines. “Up until then they had got inmates to act as nurses but they decided to train nurses as part of the formation of a hospital system. That’s where the word matron comes from in hospitals,” says Drinkall.

“Fir Vale, the one surviving workhouse building in Sheffield, was turned into a hospital in the 1930s. That makes me wonder if that is what’s behind the fear of hospitals among old people.”

The retired Rotherham Borough Council worker dedicates all her time to researching and writing about South Yorkshire’s history. Earlier this year she published Sheffield Crimes and next up is Rotherham War and Peace, looking at the town in the inter-war years.

Sheffield Workhouse is published by the History Press at £12.99.

From: http://www.sheffieldtelegraph.co.uk/news/local/a_glimpse_of_life_as_it_was_in_victorian_workhouses_1_3719005