Leader, Robert Eadon 1839 - 1922

(1839-1922), Newspaper Proprietor and Antiquary

Robert Eadon Leader, newspaper proprietor and historian of Sheffield was born in Broomhall on the 2nd January 1839. Leader graduated from New College London University in 1864 and soon after he married his second cousin called Emily Sarah Pye-Smith. In the same year, he joined his father and elder brother John Daniel Leader at the Independent who also lived in Broomhall, 20 Broomhall Street with his wife and family. The Independent had offices on Fargate which produced a Liberal paper and Robert shared these sentiments and was very active politically.

Leader was one of the founders of the Sheffield Junior Liberal Association, and of the Sheffield Parliamentary Debating Society. He unsuccessfully ran for parliament twice. In 1892 he ran as the Liberal Party candidate for the Sheffield Ecclesall constituency, and in 1895 he ran in the Bassetlaw constituency. He served as president of the Hunter Archaeological Society and the Provincial Newspaper Society.

Under the editorship of his brother between 1874 & 1878, Robert wrote a series of articles in the Independent under the titles Local Notes and Queries and Spectator in Hallamshire. It was however as an historical writer rather than a newspaperman that Robert found his strength and wrote extensively about Sheffield and its history. In 1893 Robert moved to London where he died in 1922.