The Death of Elizabeth Trott - Little Sheffield Sunday 23rd March 1806.

I came across this report the other day, It is dated Saturday 29th March 1806 and refers to the death of Elizabeth Trott that occurred on Sunday 23rd March 1806.

Little Sheffield, was a small collection of dwellings which was separate from the main town of Sheffield which was over "the Moor", then a muddy rural area. It is roughly around the bottom of what is now London Road and Cemetery Road.

"On Tuesday a Coroners Inquest was held on the body of Elizabeth Trott, a young woman of Little Sheffield, who in a fit of despair drowned herself in a pond on Sunday last.

The deliberate manner in which she put an end to her existence is somewhat extraordinary; the pond being frozen over, she broke a hole in the ice, just to admin her head, which she put into the water, and her body remained quite dry".

For the end of March it must have been particularly cold that year for ice to have formed on the pond. And poor Elizabeth must have really been in a state of deep despair for her to take her life in such a manner.