John Yeomans was baptised on 19 November 1764, the son of Richard (a tanner) and his wife, Sarah.  According to Bell (1909)¹, John was the third of sixteen children; and added that Richard (who died in 1814, aged 76), worked at Millsands.  John was apprenticed to William Fowler, a scissors smith, and granted his Freedom in 1787.  A decade later he was working in Norfolk Row, using the mark ‘RIY’.  He was listed as a fine scissors maker in Fargate between 1811 and 1816.  Subsequently, he was probably the factor and scissors manufacturer, who was listed in Arundel Street in 1822.   In 1823, John Yeomans announced an auction at Arundel Street, as he was ‘declining business and removing into the country’.  The sale included: ‘Many thousand dozens of the most modern pattern, suitable for both home and foreign markets …’ (Sheffield Independent, 18 October 1823).   John Yeomans, who had lived in Tinsley, died on 20 August 1837 (aged 73) and was buried at St Peter & St Paul churchyard.

^1. Bell , Alexander B. (ed.), Peeps into the Past: Being Passages from the Diary of Thomas Asline Ward (Sheffield, 1910)