George’s seventy years in the same job
THIS photograph was taken in 1945 and it shows a remarkable occasion. The moustached man in the flat clap is being honoured by his employer and work colleagues for a staggering 70 years service to the same company.
The man making the presentation of a gold medal is Sir Henry Maybury, who was the boss of the Rowley Regis quarry where George worked.
George was born in 1865 in Gadds Green, Turners Hill, and started work when he was 10 years old. The 1881 census, taken when George was 15 years old, lists him as a stone breaker.
Hangman
He was one of 11 children born to Joshua and Eve Taylor. Eve was said to be the daughter of George Smith, known as Throttler Smith, the Rowley Regisborn hangman, who, among his 30 or so “clients,” dispatched the notorious Rugeley poisoner Dr William Palmer at Stafford Gaol in 1856. Eve was said to be result of one of Smith’s many extra-marital affairs and was at the hangman’s bedside when he died in 1874.
George Smith had two sons – Samuel was killed in the First World War in 1917, fighting at Ephey in France, but his second son, also named George, survived the war and went on to join his father working at the same quarry. He worked there until his own retirement in 1959.
Years of hard labour appear to have done George little harm but his remarkable record of long service is unlikely to be matched nowadays – not least because no one starts work as young as he did, and working life is shorter.