Does anyone know anything about a character from Bradford's past known as "Champagne Sarah"?

No, I don't mean Cockle Sarah, of whom more later.

This lady was known as Champagne Sarah and she must have had a bob or two because the story has it that she used to go by Hansom cab to visit a pub in Westgate, where she would order champagne for herself and drinks all round.

That's the story as told to Helen Sharp of Cottingley by her 94-year-old grandmother whose own great-grandmother this generous lady was.

"My grandmother seems to recall the pub had a double-barrelled name but it was not the Boy and Barrel," writes Helen Sharp. "Apparently there was a photograph of Champagne Sarah on the wall. I have visited Bradford Library and found no information, but a colleague of mine recalls a family member talking of Champagne Sarah.

"The lady in question was born Sarah O'Neale around 1830 in Otley and in 1850 married George Chippendale in Bradford. In 1876, aged 46, she married Edmund Wilson in Heaton. He died in 1878.

"I wonder if it was after this time that she took to the champagne," suggests Helen. "Sarah died in 1885 in Bradford, aged 55. It would be wonderful if someone reading your column could help solve this mystery."

It would indeed. Over to you, readers.

Meanwhile, this is a good opportunity to recall the life of that other Sarah, Cockle Sarah, who lived in Bradford around the same time.

Cockle Sarah was reputedly born around 1834 and was 39 when in 1873 she married shellfish vendor John Laycock. When he died she continued the business on her own in the streets of Bowling and Bradford Moor, earning her nickname.

In 1889 she sat for a portrait by local artist John Sowden who later said she told him that she had a suitor but she "thowt he wor nobbut wantin' 'er for 'er cockles and not for 'ersen."

Was this chap brickyard labourer William Gath, a 54-year-old neighbour of Sarah's in Carpenter Street, who she married in 1893 when she was 59? It was reported to have been a huge wedding with about 2,000 people flocking to Holy Trinity Church to see the occasion. Sarah and William had to be given a police escort to the church.

After the ceremony, as they walked down the churchyard, a bystander grabbed Sarah and gave her a kiss for a bet. Sarah snatched the helmet off the nearest policeman and battered her admirer over the head with it.

Widowed again, Sarah went to live with her 88-year-old sister in Birkshall Lane, off Leeds Road, and came to a sad end. She fell down the cellar steps and was found there unconscious with a broken neck. She never came round and died on May 16, 1909, aged 74.

I wonder if Cockle Sarah ever sold some of her shellfish from her basket to her Champagne namesake during one of the latter's visits to the pub?