Sheffield is the largest city in Yorkshire, England, with a population of more than half a million people and during the 1960s there was extensive redevelopment in the city centre. All of the Beatles appearances there took place in 1963 and 1965. Sheffield was also the original home of Brian Epstein's mother Malka, nee Hyman, who was known as Queenie. At the age of 18, she married the 29-year-old Harry Epstein at the Synagogue, Wilson Road Sheffield 11, on September 6 1933. A five-bedroom house in Queen's Drive, Childwall, Liverpool was given to the couple as a dowry. Queenie's father Louis Hyman owned the Sheffield Cabinet Company at 11 Porter Street, Sheffield S1. Their most famous item was the Clarendon bedroom suite. The building and the road no longer exist.

The Beatles made their Sheffield debut at the Azena Ballroom, White Lane, Gleadless, Sheffield S12 during a break in their tour with Helen Shapiro. They appeared there on February 12 1963. The promoter who had booked the group was Peter Stringfellow. Originally he had booked them to appear at St. Aiden's Church Hall, where he usually held his dances. However, due to the growing popularity of the Beatles, the police advised Stringfellow to alter the venue and select larger premise so he transferred the dance to the Azena. The Zena is now a Kwik Save.

The penultimate appearance of the Helen Shapiro tour took place at the City Hall at Barker's Pool, Sheffield on Saturday 2 March 1963. The billing in the local paper read:

There were two performance, the first at 6.10pm, the second at 8.40pm and ticket prices were: Circle 8/6. 6/6. 5/6. Stalls 8/6. 7/-. 5/6, 4/-. Balcony 5/-, 3/6. Platform 3/6.

The group returned to the City Hall two weeks later on Saturday 16 March as part of another Howes tour, billed locally as:

The ticket prices were the same as those of their previous City Hall appearance. They next appeared at the City Hall as part of the Roy Orbison tour on 25 May. When they returned to the venue later that year, on Saturday 2 November, they were bill toppers in their own right.

The local paper, the Star, had organized a competition in which six of their readers would win a trip to the ABC Television Studios in Birmingham to meet the Beatles. Reviewing the concert in the Star, journalist Francis Mullins called it "the night when Sheffield went Beatle-barmy" and described how 4,000 "frenzied screamagers" yelled themselves hoarse during the two shows at the hall.

Three girls in the audience fainted. 17-yearold Joyce Elgie, a secretary from Worksop in Notts was carried from the hall in tears and treated for hysteria by local St John's Ambulance men - then allowed to return to the hall to watch the rest of the show.

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