Warning – this item has absolutely nothing to do with cricket but does have an extremely tenuous link to the club archive.
In 2020 in the Lowerhouse CC History Books I did a “guide to the first 50 years or so” – using the early club annual reports. The 1916 accounts showed that Green and Smith Minerals were purchased, and I wondered “perhaps they were not liked as they are not mentioned again.” I now feel sure that and even if Green and Smith weren’t mentioned again in the club accounts, it won’t have been because their pop wasn’t liked.
Green and Smith, manufacturers of the best burdock drink in Burnley.
Very recently, a Green and Smith bottle “popped” up amongst some old bottles donated to the Burnley Civic Trust archive and then quite by chance, a volunteer found a full page advert. for them in the 1906 Barrett’s Trade Directory. So, here are Messrs. Sydney H Green and Walter Smith, and that bottle:
And here, very briefly, is their story.
In 1893 a previous mineral water business partnership between Joshua Kippax, Sydney Herbert Green, Thomas Smith and his son Walter Smith, was dissolved with Sydney and Walter taking over the business at Old Hall Street.
Green and Smith were in business for the next 30 years until mid 1923, when the Old Hall Street premises and all their equipment were advertised for sale. The very impressive list of machinery included a mineral water plant capable of handling 400 dozen bottles per hour, and two motor lorries, which they had bought in 1919 after selling off their trusty horses, Dick and Charley.
Green and Smith may have been partners but they were two very different characters. Sydney was Church of England, a prominent local Tory, Freemason and Oddfellow. He was a well known local entertainer, and possibly liked a drink other than pop. Walter was some 15 years his junior, and a staunch Methodist, so would have been teetotal.
Sydney probably left school at around 11 years old at the latest and his education would have been rudimentary. Walter received a good local education at Dr. Grant’s school, before joining his father’s mineral water business. Different men with different but complementary skills.
Walter Smith, pillar of the church:
Walter Smith and his wife Martha, nee Knape, whose family had a coach building business, seem to have lived worthy but quiet lives. Both were pillars of Bethel Primitive Methodist Chapel in Hammerton Street where he was a trustee until it closed in 1931. The premises, next to the Little White Horse pub, later became Christian Scientist Meeting Rooms and eventually were demolished.
We do not know if Walter stayed with the mineral water business until it closed in 1923 but it was certainly still using his name. In 1924, when his only son Thomas was awarded a B.Sc. Hons. at Manchester University, Walter was said to be a book-keeper at Knape’s and then later he was book-keeper for a shroud maker. Thomas became a college lecturer in Kingston upon Thames.
A widower since 1931, Walter died in February 1949, aged 75, probably only still remembered by the Methodist congregation, and, with Green and Smith a fading memory, his death only merited a small paragraph in the paper and there is no report of his funeral, in stark contrast to his former partner.
Sydney Herbert Smith, a life worthy of Dickens :
Sydney Herbert Smith was a colourful character, born in 1860 in Sydney, New South Wales, to an English soldier father and his Irish wife. Burnley Barracks was to be his father’s last posting, sometime after April 1871, as the census shows that the family were living in Brough then. The birthplaces of the children show that before he came to Burnley, Sydney had lived in (at least) Australia, New Zealand, Cornwall and Cumberland.
In Burnley, young Sydney started work in a tallow (animal fat) candle works. In the 1881 census, he already had a wife and baby daughter, and is described as a tallow chandler (candle maker/seller). However, by March 1891, when Sydney was summoned for “being a certain distance from his horse so as not to have control over it,” he had become “a mineral water manufacturer of Elm Street”. A police inspector said he had found a driverless horse and cart at 11 pm, in Church Street so he took it to the address on the cart. Sydney said he had gone into the Talbot on business and when he came out the horse was gone. He was fined 10 shillings.
Sydney’s first two wives, both called Mary Ellen, died prematurely. From his first marriage, Sydney had four daughters and two sons, both named Sydney Herbert as the first one only lived for 4 months. Happily the second namesake, born in 1897, not only joined him in the business, but on the concert platform, Sydney Senior played the concertina, Junior the piano. The 1901 census shows that his eldest child, daughter Sarah, then 20, was also an “aeriated water manufacturer.”
In April 1922, aged about 62, and 3 years after the death of the second Mary Ellen, Sydney Senior married Charlotte Brunton, the widowed landlady of the Adelphi Hotel. According to the Burnley News, St. Peter’s Church “was well filled and the approaches were lined with crowds of people in some places three and four rows deep.” The happy couple then sailed to the United States for six weeks to visit two of Sydney’s daughters in New Bedford, Mass., which, like its sister city, Fall River, was home to a lot of Burnley emigrants. This may have prompted his retirement and the end of the Green and Smith business in 1923.
Sydney Sr. died in July 1935 aged 75, mourned as a charitable and sociable man, still well known locally and the Express printed a lengthy obituary and a list of mourners. For whatever reason, Walter Smith’s name does not appear amongst them.
From the most unpromising of beginnings, Sydney had become a very successful, self made businessman, an internationally recognised expert in all things relating to the mineral water business and even founded the manufacturers’ trade association. He was, however, no stranger to personal tragedy. And of course, he was also a virtuoso on the concertina.
AC 12/24
Images courtesy of Burnley Civic Trust Heritage Image Collection www.bcthic.org