Joseph Mears
Joseph Theophilus "JT" Mears (1871 - October 1935), was an English businessman, most notable for co-founding Chelsea Football Club.
Joseph Mears was born in 1871 in Hammersmith, London, the elder son of Joseph Mears, a builder.
In 1896, Mears and his brother Gus purchased the Stamford Bridge Athletics Ground and went on to found Chelsea Football Club in 1905. Though he was never chairman, Joseph was the "dominant influence" at the club after the death of his brother in 1912 with his son, Joe, and grandson, Brian, both later serving as chairman of the football club.
In 1907, Mears acquired the business of the Thames Electric & Motor Launch Co at Eel Pie Island and he went on to build up a large fleet of passenger launches on the Thames.
In 1919 he formed his business into Joseph Mears Launches & Motors Ltd, and acquired a garage immkn Richmond, along with several motor coaches. The company continued until 1945, when it passed to a newly formed company, Thames Launches Ltd.
He formed Joseph Mears Cinemas Ltd which built up a group of cinemas around the Richmond area.
Podcasts:
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by June Tabor
Joseph Cross
by: June TaborThere's word from the café
that the old mans ailin'
His eyes are pailin'
and the weather took his hands
They say the ring on his finger
was shaped from a bone
from some white man in Missouri
that spilled whiskey on his wife
[chorus]
He has traveled in a sacred circle
and he has traveled on a white man's train
He's killed for hunger his buffalo brother
He's killed for anger and a white man's name
His name was Joseph Cross
and he was raised by the mission
Just one of a hundred Indian boys
that wouldn't tie his shoes
He cried the night his grandpa died
and told him in a vision
"Stay close to the ways of the rattlesnake
stay close to the ways of the grizzly."
[repeat chorus]
In the 1919
chill of December
the bear and the rattler
coil sleepin' hardly breathin'
It's a penny to the kitchen boy
to run get sister Lydia
"Now you tell her that old Indian
is sleepin', hardly breathin'."
[repeat chorus]
Someone said it just weren't right
to give him a white man's funeral.
Someone said they'd just as soon as not
float him on down the river
But no one touched the ring
and no one said a thing about his chest
where it looked like a bear had ripped him
and a rattler kissed his cheek.
[repeat chorus]