Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham MenEdwards, Eliezer
History
Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men
Edwards, Eliezer
Birmingham (England)
Mr. Geach, in the days of his great prosperity, often referred with
manly pride and becoming modesty to these early days. I remember some
twenty years ago his coming down specially from the House of Commons
one night to take the chair, at the Temperance Hall, at a meeting of
the Provident Clerks' Association. In the course of his remarks that
evening, he spoke of the mercantile clerks as a body for whom he
should always feel sympathy; a class to which he felt it to be an
honour to have once belonged, and from which he himself had only
so recently emerged. He mentioned then, that "when he first came to
Birmingham some twenty-five years before, he did not know a soul in
the place which had since elected him to be its Mayor, and in which he
had, by industry and prudence, gained the esteem of so many friends,
and achieved a position very far beyond his expectations and his
merits." Only a very few weeks before his death, he made some
observations of a similar character, at the annual dinner given by the
Midland Bank Directors. Indeed, it was his frequent habit to point out
to young men that, by the practice of habits of industry, prudence,
diligence, and observation, success such as his--in kind, if not in
degree--was open to them.
Soon after Mr. Geach came to live in Birmingham, he took apartments at
Handsworth. An attachment soon sprung up between him and the daughter
of a Mr. Skally, who kept a school at Villa Cross. After a short
courtship, the young couple were married, Mr. Geach then being about
24 years of age. The house in which he wooed and won his wife is
now an inn. It stands at the angle formed by the junction of the
Heathfield Road and the Lozells Lane; and is known by the sign of the
Villa Cross Tavern.
When the Midland Bank was opened, Mr. Geach went to reside on the
premises, and here he lived for about ten years. He removed, about
1846, to Wheeleys Hill, and from thence, a few years later, he went
to reside at a large mansion at Chad Hill. For the last two or three
years of his life he lived principally in London, occupying the house,
No. 9, Park Street, Westminster.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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