Material relating to John Derby (1813 - 1912), the first Secretary of the People's College Sheffield. Derby had been a private pupil of R. S. Bayley at his house in Pitsmoor, where Bayley had been teaching pupils since his arrival in Sheffield in 1836. Derby seems to have been both a student and the People's College Secretary from its beginning in 1842 until the reorganisation after Bayley's departure in 1848. After the reorganisation Derby supported the group of students who had taken over the College by teaching the Logic Class for free, although he was no longer a student or member of the College committee.

(Source: The Story of the People's College Sheffield, by G. C. Moore Smith, 1912.)