Albert Smith (1928-2022) was co-author of The Coventry We Have Lost Series of Books. His collaborator, CocSoc member David Fry writes….
Albert was the archetype of the post-war Coventry engineer. Having lived through the War, as a child attending Broadway School in Earlsdon in 1944, at 16, he entered a general engineering apprenticeship at Iso Speedic, (a subsidiary company of Coventry Climax). He later transferred to Coventry Climax main works in Foleshill to work as a junior draftsman on the design of the first British fork lift truck ET199. Albert carried on working at Coventry Climax with two short breaks at GEC and Morris Motors at Courthouse Green before finally leaving to work at The Standard Motor Company in 1953.
After some years working for the Ford Motor Company in Detroit in the late 1950s, Albert returned to Coventry Climax as Technical Sales Manager in 1960, later becoming sales director.
Part of Albert’s role included accompanying inspectors working for large companies and ministry departments to the Power House at Sandy Lane to check the stability and design features of the fork lift trucks before they were dispatched. His knowledge of the old Daimler Power House was useful to the recent redevelopment of the building as part of the Imagineer arts complex.
Albert left in 1976 to form his own company making add-ons to fork lifts that extended their capabilities.
I got to know Albert in the 1980s over a shared interest in old postcard photographs of Coventry. We could see their great potential for showing how Coventry had changed in the past century, but contemporary books tended to concentrate on the city centre ignoring the suburbs. Albert had produced a book on his home village of Berkswell a few years earlier. The village was under threat from an invasion of lorries associated with the planned nearby ‘Super Pit’ and the book was to raise funds for the village’s opposition.
The idea of a Coventry book was soon turned into a reality with Albert tackling the western side of the city while I took charge of the east. Armed with Albert’s publishing expertise the first in what was to become The Coventry We Have Lost series was published in 1990. This was a time, just like now, when the country was on its uppers so we were not expecting it to sell very well. In fact a year later, after two re-prints it had sold 10,000 copies.
Its success was due in no small measure to the encyclopaedic knowledge that Albert possessed. Also his amazing collection of local books and ephemera was incredibly useful at a time when the internet was not available to simplify research away from the archives. It had helped that he had run an antique shop for many years in Queen Victoria Road, alongside his full time job.
If this didn’t keep him busy enough he had a lifetime love of cars from the Jaguar XK120 that he drove in the 1950s to the pre-war MG that he rebuilt more recently. As sharp as a pin until the end, I for one will miss his generosity, good humour and sharing his wonderful recall of the essential events that made up Coventry’s post-war prosperity.
Albert’s funeral is 12.15 at Canley Crematorium Tuesday 29 November 2022.