Sunday, September 11 – 1927
Many records fall to the lot of Britain’s oldest working blacksmith, Mr. James Dawber, of Chapel Place, Garston, Liverpool.
Ninety one years of age, he daily wields his sledge hammer in the Corporation forge at Garston Old Road. He is the oldest employee the Liverpool Corporation has ever had and he shows no disposition to retire.
Mr. Dawber is pretty sure that he is the oldest blacksmith still working in the British Isles. And that may well be, because smithing is dying out, and, as he says, a blacksmith is generally “finished” about fifty, when he is not unlikely to suffer from failing sight.
But Mr. Dawber’s eyes don’t trouble him. He hasn’t even got a pair of spectacles yet. But the time is coming, he thinks, when he will have to consider getting them. He cannot see print quite well as he would like.
He smokes and drinks (though not much, likes a bowl of porridge in a morning, and sometimes a beef-steak, for he still has a few teeth left, and scorns false ones. And he is a remarkable man in still another way, for he can shave himself and cut his hair without a mirror.
The veteran blacksmith confessed that he was fond of toffee, and liked to have an occasional night at the pictures.
(The Sunday Post, 11-09-1927)
A blacksmith at work
"Play Up, Liverpool" 