George Groves The Movie Sound Pioneer

Part 2 - More Research on George Groves Origins in St Helens

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 few years I 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. Thomas Groves 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". 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’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.

They lived at 57 Duke Street for six years before moving to 47 Owen Street in Thatto Heath, St Helens in 1906 when George Robert was only four. This became the family’s second "hairdressing and shaving saloon" – as they preferred to call them – as they retained their Duke Street premises as a barber's shop for ten more years.

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 with Hilda describing 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: 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”.

A week after the poem was published the Groves family were back in the newspaper as a result of a court appearance by George Snr. who was answering a summons for employing two boys after hours. On Saturday 16th January 1915, P.C. Kenyon had called in to the King Edward Road barber's for a shave and witnessed young George and another boy called Frank Shufflebottom lathering customers. It was past 10pm when youngsters weren't supposed to be working.

So the constable had his shave and then booked the barber for breaking the law! The Bench imposed a fine of 2s. 6d. on George Alfred for employing Shufflebottom. However, he was cleared of working his son George Robert after hours, after explaining that he had begun work "on his own account".

In the October 1918 female-emancipated edition of the electoral register George Robert's mother Harriet is listed for the first time as living at 21 King Edward Road. Then in Spring 1919 Uncle Arthur's wife Mary is listed as residing with her husband at the Owen Street barber's. Also 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 on October 3rd 1926 when he was just 17. 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 the 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.