Paradise Square
If you stand in the centre of Paradise Square and look around the fine Georgian buildings, with their stucco columns, pediments and fanlights, it requires little imagination to repopulate the square with its elegant 18th century inhabitants.
This was a time when the divisions between classes became more noticeable, but also when Sheffield as a city was developing at breakneck speed: it had a theatre, newspapers and a circulating library. The heyday of the Square lasted until the beginning of the 19th century, when the pot market held in the Square from its earliest days, became infamous for scenes of unruly behaviour. The market’s reputation was further damaged by the barbarous practice of wife selling.
In a 1872 letter to the Editor of the Sheffield Independent, William Wragg writes:
‘I shall not pollute its name by calling it Paradise Square. I believe some 80 years ago some brute of a savage undertook for a wager to eat a live cat on the steps. He began at the tail, and went on until he had completed his inhuman task. There have been in every age degraded wretches, and this was one. I knew a person who was present and saw the whole of the degrading transaction. I knew other person who bought his wife in the Square, led thither in a halter. Some of your readers will remember the stocks, where drunken men, on a Sunday were placed for punishment. The practice had to be dropped because it created such a disturbance. The last instance of a drunken man placed in these stocks was about 43 or 44 years ago. “Sheffielder” asks what possessed our excellent predecessors at a time when land was much cheaper and even more plentiful, to construct such narrow, ugly streets as Campo Lane or Silver Street. These streets were not laid out, they were the remains of walks, or they were bridle stiles. People built as they liked near or fronting these roads, something as we now see in the Club garden walk. They were not styled streets, but lanes, as Pudding lane, Church lane. The thoroughfares were only for foot passengers and pack horses. There were no carriages, much less omnibuses.’
The Square also played an important role in the political life of the city. In 1879, Charles Beilby Stuart-Wortley, 1st Baron Stuart of Wortley, who a year later became the first Conservative to be elected as an MP for Sheffield, organised a mass event in the Square at the Conservative Club, asking for the support of the Jewish community, who by that time occupied a wide area in and around the Square.
Mr Wortley was escorted by several hundreds of his supporters to the Conservative Club in Paradise Square. Mr Jacobs said that he was a Jew, and it was only right that he should say a few words with reference to the position which the body to which he belonged had taken up in this contest. A good deal of uncomplimentary language had been addressed to them on account of their voting for Mr Wortley. Now, they did not support Mr Wortley as Jews, but either as born or naturalised Englishmen.
The Jews were pretty well able to judge whether Mr Gladstone’s policy was the correct one, or whether Earl Beaconsfield’s was. Their ancestors came largely from Russia and Poland, and he need not recall how they were treated; it must have been bad treatment, or they would not have left their native land to reside in a strange country. They had been welcomed into this country, where they received all the rights and privileges of born Englishmen.
Mr Gladstone had said in a letter that he should not lift up his voice in aid of the Jews of Romania, simply because the Sheffield Jews had made up their mind to support Mr Wortley. Would they call those principles Liberal? Certainly not. As Jews they should vote in support of those who would maintain the honour and interests of England, who had welcomed them so heartily.
In that evening’s Sheffield Telegraph they would have noticed a letter written by Mr Cohen, Q C. In it that gentleman said that he would come to Sheffield if he thought he were wanted to do so to convert the Jews to Liberalism. That was a gratuitous insult to the Jews of this town, and they should vote as Englishmen and not as Jews. They were anxious to protect the interests of that country, which was and would be their home until they came to their own country.
How would those present like to see in England a second Poland – and yet that was what Russian interest would bring about if possible. Russia on the continent was detested for her despotism. All the Jews felt that they owed a great debt of gratitude to England, and therefore they would ever try to further the interests of this country by sending to Parliament such men as Charles Stuart Wortley. The proceedings shortly afterwards concluded, Mr Wortley being loudly cheered on leaving the building.
(Source: Alan Hall and Alice Walton, The Story of Paradise Square, Sheffield Libraries and Information Services, 1990, p. 1 and Sheffield Daily Telegraph Monday 22 December 1879 ‘Why the Jews Support Mr Wortley’)
