You remember the sinks in the midst of the streets;
When the rain poured in torrents, each passenger greets
His fellow with " What a wide channel is here,
We shall all be drown'd I'm greatly in fear."
For lately two lovers were sat on a rail
On the edge of the sink, fondly telling their tale,
When the flood wash'd them down in each others' embrace,
For no longer the lovers could sit in that place;
And hence True Love's Gutter,+ the name that was given,
Because by the flood those two lovers were driven.
------------------
* Autobiography of Samuel Roberts, pp. I3, I7, 24.
+ The poet has here allowed his imagination to betray him into the
very common sin of manufacturing fancy origins for place-names. True-
love's Gutter was not so called from any such romantic incident, but, like
many other streets, after one of those families which lived here, year in
year out, for generations; and although we do not know which particular
Truelove it was, who, through constructing the gutter or living in the
street, had his name attached to the locality, there can be no doubt that
this was its origin. A James " Trulove'' was a Burgery tenant as early
as I596; Trueloves were regularly employed in the years from I707 to
I735, doing smith's work in connection with repairs at the Church Gates,
the Almshouses, the Workhouse, the Lady's Bridge, the Irish Cross, and
other places under public control. The traditional family business of white-
smith and locksmith, perhaps then, certainly from 1774 to at least I8I7,
was carried on in High Street, a few doors above George Street, where the
late Alderman Saunders had a music shop (afterwards absorbed in Messrs.
Parkin's china warehouse), with a room up the court in whlch, before he
had plunged deeply into public life, he instructed the youth of Sheffield in
the intricacies of the mazy dance. That court was long known as
Truelove's Yard. No Sheffield Directory from I774 to the present time,
has been without its Trueloves. The I894 edition shows eight and that
for I900 seven inhabitants still bearing this name. All old Sheffielders
have been nurtured in the firm and unquestioning belief that the Castle
Street of the present represents the Truelove's Gutter of the past. It has
recently been suggested, as a deduction drawn from the order in which
the streets were arranged for the rounds of the rate collectors of I790, that
Truelove's Gutter was not Castle Street but Waingate. But there are
certain peculiarities in the old rate books which prevent this from being
regarded as by any means a sure guide; and the evidence that definitely
proves what we now call Castle Street to have been Truelove's Gutter is
overwhelming. The testimony of old street lists, old Directories and old
inhabitants, no less than what is known of the residences of such well-
known citizens as the Staniforths who lived in the same place both when
it was called Truelove's Gutter and when it had been re-christened Castle
Street, all make it impossible to admit any claim on behalf of Waingate
to the name. That has always been Waingate, and nothing else.
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