‘One Hundred and Fifty Years of Achievement’

After John Shaw died in 1858 the firm he had founded went on to record a very long and successful history. This epilogue very briefly tells some of that story, concentrating in particular on the second and third generations, critical in the evolution of many family firms. In tracing these later developments we will rely quite heavily on two celebratory anniversary documents produced either by or for the firm. Though far from neutral, these sources have value in that they reveal the firm's perception of itself, how it understood its history, and how it ordered its priorities at two key dates, in 1895 and 1945.

In 1946 John Shaw and Sons Ltd. published a slim pamphlet celebrating its 150th anniversary. The little booklet opens with a sweeping vision of just how dramatically Britain had been changed over that span of years, charting across ‘the period of the firm's life’ the wars that had been fought (significant in that another great world war had only very recently been concluded), the heroes, Kings, and Queens who had come and gone, the revolutions defeated, the technologies accomplished. Against this backdrop of transformation the firm was made to standout as a still point of continuity, for ‘Yet to-day, the House of John Shaw and Sons, Wolverhampton, Limited, still carries on business with customers commercially descended from customers of the first John Shaw’.