GEORGE GROVES IN ST.HELENS (1901-23) 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. Read on!
GEORGE
ROBERT GROVES, as we know, 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.
contemporary newspaper accounts erroneously
referred to
55
Duke Street when it was
actually
57
Duke Street.)
As a result of Thomas’ death 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 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
Hilda Barrow, George’s sister, recalled in interview in 1995 when 92 years old, that there had been a butcher’s shop facing the Owen Street barber's and a greengrocers had been 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. In 1913 they moved again but only a
few yards away 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 ‘prep’, i.e. homework at school. Each afternoon Hilda would congregate with the other girls, waiting for George and the boys to finish their prep and return home. 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
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