Henry Pickup was born on 20 October 1859 at Whitby, he was the son of Henry Pickup (1831-1928) who was a whitesmith and Mary Waudby (1835-1883). When his father had completed his apprenticeship which was served in Scarborough, and married Mary he had moved to Flowergate in Whitby where he combined his trade as a whitesmith with that of being a tobacconist. It wasn’t long however before he returned to Scarborough with his family to live in Victoria Street and was employed in the position of foreman whitesmith at WW Lathbury’s Iron Foundry on Sussex Street, where Henry (jr) also learnt his trade.
When Mr Lathbury moved to London, he asked young Henry to go and help him out in London and it was whilst there he met and later married Florence Emily Allison at Saint Michael and All Angels, Croydon on the 15 June 1885. They had four children, Henry Harry followed by twins, a boy and girl, and then Hilda Mary. One of the twins, May Cecilia, died within a short while of birth and the other, Wilfred Percy, joined the West Yorkshire Regiment in WW1 and died of wounds received in battle aged 19.
In 1892 Henry took the step of going into business on his own, as a heating and construction engineer, he got premises on Brook Street and opened a shop on Westborough. The company was successful, producing cast iron gates, railings, gas lamp posts etc. But the company’s big break came when it won the contract to supply all the iron work needed in the construction of the Marine Drive. Work continued to mount and in WW1 they moved the small foundry they had in Falsgrave to create a larger one in Roscoe Street. After the war the Council began the work of driving through the link road that was to become Northway, this work meant the demolition of the Brook Street workshops which had to be rehoused in an enlargement to the Roscoe Street premises.
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One of the most successful items that Pickup’s produced were manhole covers (in modern terms inspection lids) and they applied for the patent for the Lock & Lift covers theyhad designed. These Lock & Lift covers were transported worldwide as they could not be forced open in floods, nor lifted and used as weapons in riots. In the 1920’s and 30’s Pickups were ahead of their competitors as they were involved in new technologies including steam cooking, oil fired boilers and water softeners which were being introduced, especially in the hotel industry, where Pickups were able to instal these new systems.
A new family home was built on West Parade Road close to the firms Roscoe Street site and it was here Henry died on 16 July 1940 followed by Florence his wife in 1946, Harry’s sister Hilda Mary never married and also lived at the West Parade Road home until her death in 1970. The firm was taken over by Henry’s son Henry Harry.
