Yorkshire Almanac Death of Samuel Peech, legendary coach proprietor, of the Angel Inn, Sheffield

30 May 1809: Death of Samuel Peech, legendary coach proprietor, of the Angel Inn, Sheffield

William White. 1833. History, guide, and description of the borough of Sheffield, and the town and parish of Rotherham. Sheffield: William White. Get it:

Unedited excerpt

If an excerpt is used in the book, it will be shorter, edited and, where applicable, translated.

Mr. Samuel Peech, of whom so many humorous anecdotes are told in Sheffield, died May 30th, aged 70. He kept the Angel Inn thirty years, and was one of the most spirited coach proprietors in the kingdom, sometimes carrying his opposition so far as not only to convey persons to London, etc. for nothing, but to treat them with a bottle of wine for honouring his coach in preference to that of his opponent…

On August 20th [1810], at the sale of the late Mr. Peech’s property, at the Angel Inn, an old brass candlestick sold for £6; an old two-armed elm chair (in which Mr. Peech usually sat in the bar) for five guineas, and a set of casters for £24. The Angel Inn, a large ancient stone building, was pulled down, and rebuilt soon afterwards.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Comment

Various stories are told of Samuel Peach/Peech, of which the most blatantly false is the Irish journalist Robert Shelton Mackenzie’s “Ensign Simmonds, of the Tenth” – Peech died before Waterloo and at the age of 70, so that he probably didn’t have a young daughter (Mackenzie 1850). Is there any truth in the rest of the story? For example, Peech did appear to have serious agricultural opinions, suggesting land ownership.

Apparently contrasting portraits were made by James Ramsay and Francis Chantrey, but I have been unable to locate them.

Samuel Peech junior was a remarkable and legend-prone Sheffield vet who died in Godalming, Surrey in 1857 aged 73.

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Comment

Apparently contrasting portraits were made by James Ramsay and Francis Chantrey, but I have been unable to locate them.

Samuel Peech junior was a remarkable and legend-prone Sheffield vet who died in Godalming, Surrey in 1857 aged 73.

Something to say? Get in touch

1 July 1840: The opening of the Hull and Selby Railway terminates the threat to Hull’s port from Goole, Scarborough and Bridlington

26 December 1831: The London Zoological Society accepts the Yorkshire Philosophical Society’s offer of a mischievous bear, and suggests transport south by stagecoach

25 May 1728: King Jessop, the fighting rector of Treeton (Rotherham), is buried at Sheffield, and remembered for his punch and his parody

20 October 1676: John Reresby of Thrybergh Hall (Rotherham) hears that the Duke of Norfolk is telling London that he killed a Barbadian slave by castrating him

22 September 1829: John Broughall, an elderly Jewish pedlar, complains to Sheffield magistrates that he was ejected from the Tontine Inn (Haymarket) for running a shop inside

12 April 1706: The first four-day stagecoaches from York to London and vice versa depart from the Black Swan in each city

3 November 1826: “Nimrod” of London gets to know a coachman during a journey from Leeds to York

3 December 1816: A revolutionary bread riot is averted at Sheffield

31 January 1833: Thomas Tennant, Mayor of Leeds, tells a court how he was mugged on Bank Street on his return from a business trip south

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Comment

R.V. Taylor says that at the assizes Rollinson and Pickersgill were found guilty of the robbery and sentenced to death (the suggestion seems to be that this was commuted to transportation), while Teale and Brown had received the stolen goods and were transported for seven years (Taylor 1865).

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