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_.