Workers’ Demob. Smiles Will Circle Globe on Christmas Card (picture)

December 1946

South Yorkshire Times, December 7, 1946

Workers’ Demob. Smiles
Will Circle Globe on Conisbrough Firm’s Christmas Card.

The photographs of four young Conisbrough ex-service men will this Christmas Grace the office desks of businessmen from the Fiji Islands to the United States, from Africa to Canada, from the West Indies to Palestine – in fact almost from the four corners of the earth.

The “Lads”

These young men, Messrs Walter Horton, March Street, George Mills and his brother Sam, Daylands Avenue, and Maurice Brewster, Morley Place, are all employees of Messrs. George Booth and Sons Ltd., Sickle manufacturers, Conisbrough, and their photographs appear on the Christmas card the firm are sending this year to their customers at home and abroad, with the message:

“1940 – 1946. Some of the lads we are pleased to welcome back and who will help us to give better service.”

The cards have been printed for the firm by the South Yorkshire Times Printing Co. Ltd., and the managing director, Mr J. H Rawding, explained on Monday that in all 900 cards were being dispatched. More than half would be sent to customers in Britain, but the others would go to Australia, New Zealand, Fiji Islands, British West Indies, South and East Africa, India and Burma, Central and South America, Canada, the USA, Palestine, Denmark and Holland.

“All the four lads were volunteers, all served overseas and all saw service extending from 4 to 5 years,” Mr Rawding added. “They came back to us at varying intervals during the spring and summer, and we thought it would be a happy idea to picture them on our Christmas cards in their service uniforms and then in their working clothes, back at work.”

George Mills and Walter Horton served in the RAF and Sam Mills and Maurice Brewster in the Navy. Horton is a grinder, George pulls the wood turner, Sam Mills a machinist and Brewster a sickle maker.