When the old Sheffield and Rotherham line was contemplated, “A hundred and twenty inhabitants of Rotherham, headed by their vicar, petitioned against the bill, because they thought the canal and turnpike furnished sufficient accommodation between the two towns, and because they dreaded an incursion of the idle, drunken, and dissolute portion of the Sheffield people as a consequence of increasing the facilities of transit.” For a time the opposition was successful but eventually the Lord’s Committee yielded to the perseverance of the promoters of the bill.

Sheffield and Rotherham Independent.