Adults at Crumpsall Workhouse, Manchester, c.1897 (No photos of Sheffield workhouse inmates have been found). Source: Manchester Archives.
Old Sammy was 106 when he died in the workhouse in 1903. He was the oldest person in Sheffield at the time, and the oldest person ever buried in the Sheffield General Cemetery. He remembered the great feast held near Coalpit Lane to celebrate the Battle of Waterloo and went to the Great Exhibition in London in 1851.
He spent over 40 years in the workhouse and was rather bad-tempered in his later years. Two years before he died he was interviewed by the Sheffield Independent:
And such grievances has Sammy. He is an inmate of the infirm ward. Some time ago … he was accustomed to have daily three pennyworth of gin, and also eggs. Once when his privileges, which he regards as sacred prerogatives, were invaded, his violent will devised the revenge of throwing a cup of hot tea at his nurse … For punishment the gin was knocked off. And while he was suffering from that intolerable oppression his dignity was again hurt, and he beat his nurse with a stick for satisfaction. So an egg had to go.
Sammy was interred in Vault QQ in the Lower Catacombs which was used as a public grave. This Vault has 77 burials of unrelated people.
You can read more about people who died in the workhouse who are buried in the Cemetery in the Sheffield General Cemetery Trust’s publication A Window into the Workhouse.