Description

Admin History:

Samuel Lightfoot was born Samuel Scholefield around 1785 at Colne Bridge near Saddleworth in the West Riding of Yorkshire. On 11 April 1796 he was apprenticed to Christopher Briggs, insurance broker, of Hull, for the usual term of seven years. He was described as being son of John Scholefield, yeoman of Hull. He was made free of the Borough on 27 January 1806.

Scholefield is next recorded in White's 1826 directory of Hull as practicing as an attorney in the Land of Green Ginger. It is known from the Roll of Freemen that he changed his name to Lightfoot, and the evidence of the bank book (C DFL/5/2) suggests that this occurred in mid 1829. By 1837 he had a partner and the firm was known as Lightfoot and Earnshaw, of 12 Bowlalley Lane. The firm is recorded at this address, known as Lightfoot, Earnshaw and Frankish, from 1848. It continued to operate in Bowlalley Lane until 1876, but a successor practice appears to have existed at the address until relatively recently.

As well as being a solicitor, the account books show that Lightfoot acted as a money lender, and had substantial investments in local undertakings such as the Hull Dock Company, the Hull Botanic Gardens, and as they developed, local and regional railways. In 1846 he published two pamphlets criticising the accounting practices of the Dock Company (see C DMX/297/2).

He married his second wife, Marianne Kirkby of Sheffield, in 1828. They are known to have had one daughter, Augusta Ann, who died aged 8 in 1838. From 1838 Lightfoot is recorded as living at Spring Head House in Cottingham parish, where he died on 13 August 1870 and was buried in the General Cemetery.