George Groves in St.Helens (1901 - 1923) Part 2
Further research on George's origins in Lancashire, England
57 Duke
Street, St.Helens where George Groves was born
- note the BFI plaque
Researching movie
sound pioneer George Groves' twenty-two years
as a resident of St.Helens (and briefly
Liverpool and Coventry),
plus
his family background, is an ongoing work in
progress. Over the last couple of years we have
established the precise locations where George
lived in the town and their
timelines, as well as the
St.Helens connection between his family and top
Hollywood character actor of the 1930s,
Herbert
Mundin. Astonishingly
it all hinged on a terrifying night in
November 1895.
GEORGE
ROBERT GROVES, was born on the
13th December 1901 over a barber’s shop
at
57 Duke Street, St.Helens. The
1901 census lists his 22 year-old father
George Alfred Groves and 25 year-old
mother
Harriet Groves
(née
Saxby)
as well
as 12 year-old uncle
William Arthur Groves as living at no. 57
when George came into the world.
George Alfred had been apprenticed to his
master barber uncle
Thomas Groves in September 1892
when just thirteen and it was Thomas who
originally owned the Duke Street barber’s
shop. He died on the 19th November 1895, aged
35 years, through injuries sustained in
throwing himself out of his first-floor window.
His death certificate lists the cause of death
as
"jumping from bedroom window to escape from
police".
St.Helens
Reporter's article of 22/11/1895
St.Helens
Newspaper report
23/11/1895
(Courtesy
St.Helens Local History & Archives
Library)
Although he had
gone to bed at 11.30pm on the 13th November in
a normal frame of mind, he had woken at 2.10 am
in such a maniacal state that – according
to the St.Helens Reporter’s own
contemporary account – his wife Jane
Groves
“fled in
terror”
from
him and ran for the police. Upon the arrival of
the constables, Thomas Groves proceeded to
throw a gold watch and furniture out of his
bedroom window at them.
Police Sergeant
Strong then used a hatchet to break down the
bedroom door, prompting Groves to leap through
his window. Although a witness referred to it
as being
"a sensible jump", like an athlete
would make, he still managed to break an arm,
damage his spine and suffer a severe shock to
his system. Despite these injuries he was
somewhat bizarrely taken all the way to
St.Helens Town Hall, so that a doctor could be
summoned. He was then returned to his home
where he died five days later.
(Nb.
contempory newspaper accounts erroneously
referred to
55
Duke Street when it was
actually
57
Duke Street.)
As a result of Thomas’s unfortunate
demise, the barber's shop passed to George
Alfred, his apprenticed nephew. However, he
continued to live in the Sutton district of
St.Helens at 2 Cairne Street, until his
marriage to
Harriet Saxby on May 31st, 1900,
which was also his 21st birthday. Their first
child
George Robert - the Hollywood
movie sound pioneer to be - was born over the
shop the following year.
Groves Brothers
business card for their Duke Street and Owen
Street premises
George’s sister, Hilda Barrow, recalled in interview in 1995 that there'd been a butcher’s shop facing the Owen Street barber's with a greengrocers next door, run by two ladies called Brown who also had a bakery at the rear. The premises at 47 Owen Street are small and it’s hard to imagine that it could accommodate the whole Groves family, which by now included George Robert’s siblings, Hilda (b.1903) and Herman (b.1909) as well as a group of men waiting to have a haircut and shave!
In 1911
William Arthur
(known as Uncle
Arthur),
who was
by then in charge of the Owen Street shop
married, so the rest of the Groves family,
including nine-year-old George, moved to 130
Speakman Road in Dentons Green, St.Helens. Just
two years later they moved again but by only a
few yards to 21 King Edward Road (pictured
right) which runs parallel to Speakman Road.
Hilda Barrow described it
as:
...moving across the entry. There were two houses back to back into King Edward Road and at that time there was a big farm opposite the house. No houses, just a big farm, big fields.
The children went to Ravenhead School in Nutgrove, Thatto Heath and then onto Cowley Grammar School, which was segregated. George and the other boys at Cowley would have to stay behind each night to do their ‘prep’, i.e. homework that was undertaken at school. Hilda recounted how each afternoon she and the other girls would gather to wait for George and the boys to finish their prep and return home.
On January 29th, 1915, the St.Helens Reporter published a poem by 11-years-old Hilda called 'The British Nut' in their 'Children’s Circle' section of the paper:
'We skit him in verse and prose and hold him up to scorn,
We criticise his well-pressed clothes.
His “Weary Willie” yawn,
We laugh to see him boldly strut,
With tightly hobbled belle,
But now the gallant British “nut”,
Is coming from his shell,
He may look funny by the sea,
In collar stiff and high,
Or in a café sipping tea,
To watch the girls go by,
But when his country makes the call,
An enemy to quell,
He puts his duty first of all,
And comes out of his shell.'
The Reporter Children’s Circle's motto was 'Love One Another' and all letters were requested to be addressed to 'DADDY, Office of this paper'.
In the October 1918, female-emancipated edition of the electoral register, George Robert's mother Harriet is listed for the first time as resident at 21 King Edward Road and in Spring 1919, Uncle Arthur’s wife Mary is listed as living with her husband at the Owen Street barber’s. (In the October 1918 edition, William Arthur is recorded as being an ‘absent’ voter, having yet to return from the war. His brothers Ernest and Charles - George Robert's uncles - were, incidentally, killed in the conflict.)
In 1919 Olive was born and George Robert had a third sibling. However, George’s brother Herman, who was a talented young actor, would die of appendicitis when he was just 17 on 3rd October 1926. In 1922 the family left King Edward Road and St.Helens to live at 200/202 Smithdown Lane, Liverpool. George’s mother Harriet ran a shop at no. 200 selling earthenware pottery, underneath the residential accommodation at no. 202. They still owned their Duke Street shop and two cottages in St.Helens, so supplemented their income with rent from these properties. George Robert Groves is not listed in any electoral registers for St.Helens. He would not have been eligible to vote until December 1922 and by then was living in Coventry as he worked for the Peal-Conner Telephone Company in Coventry for a year making wireless radio receivers.
In 1938 what remained of the Groves family moved to a newly-built property in Pilch Lane, Huyton near Liverpool. In June 1951 George Groves returned to England for a month and stayed at his parents house with his fiancée Jane Blackman. However, it’s unlikely that George ever returned to the town of his birth, although he never completely lost his English accent until his death in 1976.
Read The Herbert Mundin Connection Here