Billy Williams

Named Herbert Samuel Williams, apparently after a family friend and former employer of his father, he was always known as Billy or Bill. The story in the family is that, as a child, he looked so much like his father that he was known as “Young Bill” and it stuck.

He attended Christ Church School, Tettenhall, leaving at the age of 14. A testimonial from his headmaster, James D Beevers in 1948 said he was “punctual, regular in attendance, well-mannered and thoroughly trustworthy” and described him as hard-working, with average school work, from a very respectable family.

He seems to have always worked with cars, having obtained a provisional driving licence on his 17th birthday. He worked as a driver for Wolverhampton Steam Laundry in the early 1950s and, by 1956, was working for the Staffordshire Motor Car Tyre Co. in Chapel Ash, Wolverhampton. He was called up for National military service and joined the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, being based at 2nd A.A. Workshops Co. in Wednesfield, Staffordshire.

By the early 1970s, he was working as a driver for the wines and spirits division of Wolverhampton and Dudley Breweries (the Park Brewery, just known locally as Banks’s Brewery).

A smoker, he died of lung cancer, aged 48.