Here's an interesting diary. Who wrote it? Where did it originally come from? The answers to those two questions I can't help you with. How did it come to be here on the Internet? I can answer that one!
Some time in the early seventies my mum-in-law Shirley was working at the Central Library in Sheffield. Now from time to time books and other material came in from house clearances, companies that had closed down, old catalogues, things like that. As you can imagine, not everything could be kept for reasons of space (a lot of the material was transferred onto microfiche so don't worry, not everything is lost).
This particular diary was earmarked for disposal and on looking at it Shirley thought it much too interesting to throw away and took it home to ensure its future safety.
After reading it my wife Lynne embarked on the tedious task of typing it all out. As Lynne is not a typist and the original is written lomghand in different inks and has faded over the years as you can imagine.
Lynne left the original spellings and grammer intact, also any emphasis in the original text, and in formatting the diary for the Internet I have kept it the same, so what you read here is as written.
From 1843 to 1864 this diary records some of the happenings and events that affected Sheffield and its people and thanks to Lynne and her mum Shirley, it has survived so we can get a flavour of what this mystery diarist thought important enough to record in a little black notebook all those years ago.
