contractors, his Jacquard machine for punching holes of any pitch or pattern in bridge and boiler plates. He subsequently invented a self-acting machine for simultaneously shearing iron and punching both webs of angle-iron to any pitch. In 1845 he invented an electro-magnet, one example of which was placed in the museum at Peel Park, Manchester, and another with the Scottish Society of Arts. At the exhibition of 1851 he obtained the medal for a turret clock, and in 1852 he devised several improvements in steamships.
Roberts was one of the greatest mechanical inventors of the century, but his fertility in invention did not save him from poverty in his old age. A substantial fund was being raised for him in Manchester at the time of his death. He died on 16 March 1864, and was buried in Kensal Green cemetery, where a medallion portrait is on his tomb. His portrait is given in Agnew's ‘Portraits of the Inventors of Machines for the Manufacture of Textile Fabrics.’ An original drawing, by J. Stephenson, is at South Kensington.
[Proc. Lit. and Phil. Soc. Manchester (1864), iii. 274; Manchester Soc. of Engineers' Trans. Jan. 1887 (paper on ‘Lancashire Inventors’ by Sir William Bailey); Smiles's Industrial Biographies, pp. 178, 264–73, Lives of the Engineers, iii. 432; Baines's History of the Cotton Manufacture; Ure's Philosophy of Manufactures, pp. 366–8; Engineering Facts and Figures, 1863, p. 213; Illustrated London News, June 1864, with portrait; Athenæum, 1864, i. 476.]
ROBERTS, SAMUEL (1763–1848), author and pamphleteer, known as the ‘Pauper's Advocate,’ born at Sheffield on 18 April 1763, was the second son of Samuel Roberts, manufacturer and merchant, by his wife, Mary Sykes. At the age of fourteen he entered his father's manufactory of silver and plated goods, passing through every department. Here he remained until 1784, in which year Roberts and a brother apprentice established what rapidly became a most successful business in silver and plated ware in Sheffield.
At the age of twenty-seven he published his first essay in the local press, being a satire on the then new fashion of hiding the chin in voluminous neck bandages. This was well received, and he was encouraged to pursue a literary career, which extended over the remainder of his life, but was never allowed to interfere with his business habits or his duties as a citizen. His leading motive was benevolence, and he rigidly carried out his early formed resolutions, never to publish anything that he was not convinced was favourable to morality and religion, and never to publish for profit (Autobiography, p. 45).
Roberts was the author of an immense number of books, pamphlets, broadsheets, and contributions to the press, dealing with such subjects as war, capital punishment, game laws, slave trade, lotteries, drunkenness, poor laws, child labour, chartism, and all that he thought unjust or tyrannical.
Roberts died at his residence, Park Grange, Sheffield, on 24 July 1848, in his eighty-sixth year, and was buried at Anston. He married Elizabeth, the only daughter of Robert and Elizabeth Wright, of North Anston, on 22 Oct. 1794, by whom he left one son and three daughters, including Mary, author of ‘Royal Exile,’ 1822 [see under Roberts, Mary, (1788–1864)]. An engraving from his portrait, by William Poole, appears as a frontispiece to many of his publications. His bosom friend, James Montgomery the poet, wrote a brief obituary notice of Roberts for the local press.
Roberts's chief works are: 1. ‘Tales of the Poor, or Infant Sufferings,’ 1813; 2nd ser. 1829. 2. ‘Blind Man and his Son,’ &c., 1816. 3. ‘State Lottery, a Dream,’ 1817. 4. ‘Defence of the Poor Laws,’ 1819. 5. ‘Life of Queen Mary’ (in the ‘Royal Exile’), 1822. 6. ‘Tom and Charles,’ 1823. 7. ‘Negro's Friend, or the Sheffield Antislavery Album,’ 1826. 8. ‘World of Children,’ 1829. 9. ‘Parallel Miracles, or the Jews and the Gypsies,’ 1830. 10. ‘The Gypsies, their Origin, Continuance, and Destination,’ 1836; 5th edit. enlarged, 1842. 11. ‘Yorkshire Tales and Poems,’ 1839. 12. ‘Milton Unmasked,’ 1844. 13. ‘Memoirs of Elizabeth Creswick Roberts,’ 1845. 14. ‘Lessons for Statesmen,’ 1846. 15. ‘Autobiography and Select Remains,’ 1849.
[Autobiography, 1849; Memoirs of James Montgomery, by John Holland and James Everitt, 7 vols. 1856; Reminiscences of Old Sheffield, ed. R. E. Leader, 1876; Life of John Holland, by W. Hudson, 1874; Sheffield newspapers, 29 July 1848; information supplied by a grandson, Samuel Roberts, esq., M.A.]
ROBERTS, SAMUEL (1800–1885), social and political reformer, better known by his initials ‘S. R.,’ was the eldest son of John Roberts (1767–1834) [q. v.], and was born on 6 March 1800 at the (independent) chapel-house, Llanbrynmair, Montgomeryshire. He was taught until he was ten by his father, and subsequently at a school at Shrewsbury, after which he worked on his father's farm, and acquired a knowledge of shorthand. After preaching in connection with his father's church about 1819, he went
