Joseph Bamford could shoot, fish, swim, and sail. Bamford paid more than fair wages, which rose regularly, and annual bonuses based on reports of individual worth. In 1967 Bamford stood on a farm cart and handed out personal cheques totalling £250,000. This extraordinary focus in return gave unprecedented levels of workforce flexibility, with the average JCB employee through the strike-dominated 1970s and early 1980s being seven times more productive than the average British manufacturing worker. In 1975 Bamford and his wife Marjorie (née Griffin – married 1941) handed over the business to their two sons, and retired to Switzerland as tax exiles.
Mary Ellen Bamford Mary Ellen Bamford Mary Ellen Bamford (December 10, 1857 – May 21, 1946) was an American author from Healdsburg, California. Mary Ellen Bamford was born in Healdsburg, California. She was the daughter of Doctor William Bamford and Cornelia Elizabeth Rand; her parents were pioneer settlers. In the 1850s, her future father, born in Ireland, had traveled across the plains whilst Cornelia Rand had arrived by California from her native New Hampshire by sea via Cape Horn. Her parents married on February 16, 1857 in Santa Rosa, California. Mary Bamford had an older half brother, Edmund L. Bamford, from Dr. Bamford's