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.
Joseph Fry (type-founder) Joseph Fry (type-founder) Joseph Fry (1728 – 27 March 1787), was an English type-founder and chocolate maker and founder of the Bristol branch of the Quaker Fry family. He was the eldest son of John Fry (d. 1775) of Sutton Benger, Wiltshire, author of ‘Select Poems,’ 1774, 4th edition, 1793. He was educated in the north of England, and afterwards bound apprentice to Henry Portsmouth of Basingstoke, an eminent doctor, whose eldest daughter, Anna, he afterwards married. He was the first member of his family to settle in Bristol, where he acquired a considerable medical practice, and ‘was led to