Gilbert Alan Gascoine (1883 - 1970)

Born 27 Feb 1883 in Tufnell Park, London, England

Ancestors

Husband of Dorothy Margaret (Ward) Gascoine — married 1909 in St Pancras, London

Husband of Gladys Dutton — married 1922 in Edmonton, Middlesex, England

Died 1970 at about age 86 in Winona Cottage, Sonning Eye, Reading, Berkshire, England

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Biography

PEOPLE IN THE NEWS. To look at Gilbert Alan Gascoine, striding purposefully through the shops at Taylors, you'd put his age at around 60, or, at the most, 65. But you'd be way, way out. "G.A.", who is in charge of packing he ships the most delicate instruments all over the world--will be 77 next February. He is-can you doubt it ?-the oldest employee in the Group. Born in London, educated at a public school in Gravesend, G.A. was a civil servant at 17. When the Boer War broke out he made several attempts to join up and eventually enlisted in the cavalry; the war ended, however, before he could see active service. He then entered the offices of a company promoter and, by the time he was 21, he was secretary to businesses closely connected with the notorious Horatio Bottomley, "of whom," he says, "I cherish two memories: receiving from him a Christmas box of £100 and seeing him arrive at his office every day in a splendid dog-cart behind a high- stepping horse." G.A. next joined the London County Council's tramways department, where he witnessed the change- over from horse-drawn to electric traction. He had a part, too, in the installation of Greenwich power station. On 5th August 1914, the day after World War I was declared, he enlisted in the Queen's Westminsters and thus earned the Mons Star with rosette. Commissioned to the Machine Gun Corps, he was wounded on the Somme in 1916 and was invalided home, considered unfit for further active service. "Unfit!" The next few years were to prove how ludicrous that verdict had been. In 1920 he went to the Gold Coast, building railways through the African forest: "the white man's grave," they called it then. That job lasted eight years. Next he joined a merchanting company for whom he bought and shipped 40,000 tons of cocoa a year. In this capacity he drove thousands of miles through the most primitive country, penetrating even to the Sahara. (He still drives: in 41 years he has never been in a police court, never made an insurance claim. For Taylors he still occasionally acts as chauffeur.) In 1936 the cocoa job folded up and he came back to England, aged 53 and unwanted. He managed to keep his head above water and when World War II came he was soon in a job again, working first on Halifax bombers and then with the Ministry of Aircraft Production where his tropical experience proved of great value in the development of the new science of pre-packing and preserving military stores. At 65, the axe fell. "Fortunately," he says, "I had served as a senior NCO in the Thames Patrol and there met a friend who, ignoring my age, got me into Taylor's. I have been there ever since and they have been ten very happy years, indeed." G.A. pays tribute to his wife, Gladys, who lived with him in the African forests and who survived least one fearful storm at sea. at "Age," says G.A., "does not alter a man. If he's dull at 65 then he was probably dull at 25." (1)

Sources

• https://www.ancestry.co.uk/family-tree/person/tree/48744014/person/26140180348/facts
• (1) M.I. News, Sept 1959.