I posted on here a few weeks about about a Cyril Lewis who married my grandad's cousin, it turned out Cyril was illegitimate when I ordered his birth certificate. He gave a false father's name, Frank Lewis on the marriage certificate and by coincidence the 1939 census shows a Frank Lewis living down the road from Cyril and his mother Lily in Merry Hill, Wolverhampton.
This Frank Lewis who appears to be no relation, was born in Willenhall a few miles east of Wolverhampton around 1880 and his father Joseph was a lock worker as lockmaking was the main industry in Willenhall. What interested me was how Frank, after working as a clerk at a foundry, was an ironfounder himself by the 1939 census. His brother George had also moved to Wolverhampton and was a commercial traveller.
Was it quite common for some people from working class backgrounds to set up their own businesses like Frank or to become a travelling salesman like his brother? I found George's one son trained as an architect and later lived in Tettenhall, a leafy village that used to have its own council, but it's now part of the borough of Wolverhampton. I might have an even more distant connection by marriage with this family as I had heard of a Mary Lewis (Lewis was her married name) who was a cousin of one of my great-grandmothers from Bilston who later lived in Tettenhall and her husband was either an accountant or architect.
