Ernest Gimson in Leicester

Ernest William Gimson was born on 21 December 1864 in Leicester, the fourth son of Josiah Gimson and his second wife, Sarah Ansell. 

 

 

Leicester had expanded dramatically in the nineteenth century from a market town into an industrial city, a major centre for commerce and manufacturing.  There was money to be made but also increasing problems of poverty and disease.

 

Ernest’s grandfather had been a carpenter; his father had begun his working life as an iron founder and machinist. In 1842 Josiah Gimson and his brother, Benjamin, set up Gimson and Company making heavy machinery. A large new factory, the Vulcan Works, was built near Humberstone Road between 1876 and ’79. Josiah Gimson was quickly established as an important and influential manufacturer in Leicester. His engineering firm was one of the largest employers in the city and prided itself on being a model employer in terms of wages and conditions of work. In 1877 he was elected as a Liberal councilor in the ward of West St Mary’s.

 

Josiah Gimson died in 1883 when Gimson was 18. The business was left to Ernest’s two half-brothers, Josiah Mentor and Arthur, his elder brother Sydney and his cousin Josiah.        

 

Between 1889 and ‘91 the firm of Gimson and Company cast the great beam engines which pumped sewage as part of a new system of municipal sanitation to combat the recurrent outbreaks of diarrhoea. These can still be seen (sometimes working) at the Abbey Pumping Station, part of Leicester Museums. At about the same time the firm also cast two bridges, at Upperton Road and Mill Lane, over the Grand Union Canal.