Charles Peace - Family and Childhood

Family and Childhood

Charles Peace's father, John Peace, began work as a collier at Burton upon Trent. After losing his leg in an accident, he joined "Wombwell's wild beast show" and soon acquired some reputation for his remarkable powers as a tamer of wild animals. About this time John Peace married at Rotherham the daughter of a surgeon in the Navy. On the death of a favourite son to whom he had imparted his skills in taming wild beasts, Peace gave up lion-taming and settled in Sheffield as a shoemaker. On 14 May 1832, his wife gave birth in Sheffield to a son, Charles, the youngest of a family of four. The family lived at 59 Ingram Road, in the Norfolk Park area of the city.

Charles Peace met with an accident in 1846 at some rolling mills, in which he was employed. A piece of red hot steel entered his leg just below the knee, and after eighteen months spent in the Sheffield Infirmary he remained crippled for life. About this time his father died.

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