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John Roberts, 1940 - 1941 John Roberts started work at the age of twelve at a nuts and bolts factory, working twelve-hour shifts for six shillings a week. During the 1920s he ran his father's fried fish business in Ettingshall before moving into the chemical manufacturing industry, working in a Wolverhampton laboratory for twenty-six years. Roberts presented Bilston Borough Council with a large painting of Drake's Drum, which was displayed prominently in the town hall during the war years. He was elected mayor in 1940, and in 1943 was made an alderman together with another former mayor, GH Plant. Four years later, in 1947, he retired from civic duties through ill health, having spent twenty-one years in local politics. On the 4th April 1962 he was presented with the Freedom of the Borough, one of only three people at that time to be given the honour. Smallshire,
JL 1986: Pioneering in Black Country Local Government 1850-1950.
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