Samuel Roberts (Sheffield writer)

At the age of fourteen he entered his father's business of silver and plated goods, remaining there until 1784, when he established a firm of his own with fellow apprentice George Cadman (1760–1823).

[1] As a successful and prosperous businessman, he was made an Overseer of the Poor in 1804, a position he shared with James Montgomery, to whose newspaper The Sheffield Iris he now began to contribute.

[3] From then on, "by a rigid economy of time, he found innumerable opportunities for the exercise of his pen on a great variety of subjects"[4] in both verse and prose.

Among the many other benevolent causes he championed, along with Montgomery, was the abolition of slavery and opposition to war, to capital punishment and, particularly in his final years, to the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act.

[5] His portrait by local artist William Poole (1799–1888), shows him standing with his cane, hat and gloves in one hand and his watch in the other.