Looking Back: Did anyone know what Big Ada weighed?

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During the 1950s the City Centre was undergoing a transformation. The war had left much bomb damage which was slowly being rectified. We were used to seeing the dereliction of Burtons Building until around 1960. C & A Modes had been re-built in 1954, with Woolworth on Haymarket and the elegant John Walsh both re-built in the early 1950s.

However it was the interesting people in town who caught our imagination.

The Rag and Tag market on Dixon Lane provided many of them. Joe ‘Potty’ Edwards commanded large audiences with his nonstop patter whilst throwing whole dinner services up into the air, catching the crockery on his arm. There was no excuse in Sheffield in the 1950s for not having a nice dinner service, even if you never used it!

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At the entrance to the market was the ‘weighing scale lady’ with brass scales and a seat covered with old carpet. The small bird like woman could guess your weight before you sat down and was rarely wrong.

Big Ada on Dixon Lane, Sheffield. Picture credit Robert BlomfieldBig Ada on Dixon Lane, Sheffield. Picture credit Robert Blomfield
Big Ada on Dixon Lane, Sheffield. Picture credit Robert Blomfield

Further up Dixon Lane was ‘Big Ada’ overseeing her fruit and salad stall. Ada was very large, had a colourful vocabulary and, it was said, could be a bit of a fighter. A joke around at the time was ‘What’s Big Ada weigh?’ The answer was ‘tomatoes’.

At the corner of Haymarket and High Street was usually a policeman in the middle of the road directing traffic. Stood behind him in the road would be Harry Taylor known as the ‘Duke of Darnall’ who wore a frock coat, pin striped trousers, white gloves and a bowler hat. He was a friend of ‘Russian Edna’ a local prostitute who frequented the ‘Barleycorn’ and was murdered by a client.

‘Pond Street Nora’ allegedly lived in the Ladies toilets in Pond Street Bus Station. She was a large and fearsome looking lady with a choice vocabulary.

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Rummaging through the litter bins would be ’Rommel’ so called because he wore Luftwaffe type pilot goggles and a leather jacket opened to show his bare chest.

My favourite ‘celebrity’ was John Spitzer, the 20 stone manager of the Empire Theatre who left his home in the Grand Hotel on Leopold Street each afternoon to walk down to the theatre resplendent in evening dress.

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