MORE ABOUT GEORGE
George Livesey retired from his job as Company
Secretary and Engineer at South Met, in 1882.
This had been part of the agreement with the Phoenix Company when the
companies amalgamated. The Journal of Gas
Lighting reported on a retirement party at which George was presented with an
illuminated address and a diamond bracelets for Harriet. Many speeches were made about how much he had
achieved - speeches made by loyal group of old friends and associates who George
had largely grown up with in the works.
the Journal of Gas Lighting went on to praise Livesey and his work ‘Is
he a public official? He must have influence over subordinates for good there,
is no tinge of jealousy of selfishness – he has intellectual force and trained capacity’.[1]
George’s younger brother Frank took over
his role as company engineer or professional Secretary was employed. However is it likely that George at the age
of 45 was about to take his armchair and slippers for one year after gas
lighting suggested less than abandonment of active work by the move into more
expansive sphere.
He had already been elected onto the South Met
Board at the previous January meeting and in August was elected as Deputy Chair. As part of the re-organisation the he was finally
elected as Chairman - a post he was to hold for the next 20 years. You might
say that in his first 50 years with South Met he’d never looked back –the next
20 were to be even busier. As Journal of Gas Ligjting sad he was anoit
to move ‘into a more expansive sphere’. [2]
The issues which he dealt with in South Met
were clearly a continuum and there were many things which he took up as Manager
which he continued with as a Board Member and Chairman. Technical improvements in the works continued
as did some more amalgamations and of course the building of the East Greenwich
gasworks . There were a number of issues
around the gas managers professional bodies and there was also a number of disputes
of various sorts. there was also welfare
work among the gasworks’ staff and the growth of his ideas on partnership. . All of these issues need to be looked at as
well as his personal life and continuing involvement in the temperance movement.
TEMPERANCE
He regretted his his failures ‘I had not
done as much as I would have liked for all classes’ and put his failure down to
‘too much drink’. his own successes had come about because he had ‘signed the
pledge’ due to Broadberry who was aged 18 and a blacksmith’s hammerman and ‘is
now Engineer of the Tottenham and Edmonton Gas Company .. I could not have done
it with drink;.Livesey omitted to say that the young hammerman was also his
cousin
George Livesey had been a temperance advocate and activist since
boyhood. He had 'signed the pledge' at the age of fifteen while involved in a
temperance organisation which had been set
by workers at the Old Kent Road Works. This step which identified him
with the cause of the temperance movement was at the level at which the
ordinary workers of Peckham were also identified. He became a founder member of
the Band of Hope Union and its president in the year before his death.
Throughout his life he was a Sunday School teacher and a worker and benefactor
to whatever church he currently attended throughout various moves.
Canon Ransford, his friend and sometime Vicar of St. Jude's, Herne
Hill, said that Livesey gave a tenth of his income to the church. Outside of
this he patronised and supported temperance organisations around South London -
his will lists several such charities to which he left money. He was known as a
local philanthropist - in the 1860s he had been involved in the setting up of a
temperance working men's club in Peckham and in the late 1880s gave a public
library to the Vestry of Camberwell to be free to the working people of the
area
One of the issues
George had taken up as Assistant Manager to his father was Sunday working. In the previous July he had given a report to
the annual conference of gas managers on the issue, as the result of a survey
undertaken along with Robert Morton. As a result of finding a majority of gas
managements in favour of reducing Sunday working he wrote to the Journal of Gas
Lighting proposing a scheme in all Gas Works similar to that implemented at
South Met. [3] This letter needs to be seen not only in the
context of his religious views nut also n relation to the increasing industrial
unrest in the gas industry in this period. Workers were agitating on a number
of issues of which Sunday working was one.
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