On This Day 30th April

For ages we wondered about the identity of Count Royle. Then found out it was someone we had known all along.

George Gould was born on 16th August, 1920 in Stoke on Trent, Staffordshire. He was born into a mining family, with both his father and grandfather being coal miners. We have no knowledge of George following in his father’s footsteps, or if he did it was for only a short time as by nineteen years of age he was working a lathe in a factory.

George took up wrestling in his teens. We came across him in three matches at Chester in the winter of 1939, his friend Bill Ogden also on each of those bills. In wrestling circles George was known as one of the “Hanley lads,” four friends who could often be seen working together, Bill Ogden, John Hall, Jack Santos and George.

The four friends would travel in Bill’s van, working all over the place for the independent promoters. George travelled and wrestled for more than twenty years, our last recorded match being in 1965, when he was forty five years old.

Admittedly not one of the biggest names in wrestling George did work at some of the biggest halls, like the Belle Vue, Manchester, against some of the biggest names that included George Kidd, Jack Dempsey and Tommy Mann. He earned himself a reputation amongst colleagues as a very hard man to wrestle. At times he pulled on a mask and wrestled as Count Royle.

During the war George got married, in 1941, and was called up to serve with the legendary Chindits, the British India 'Special Force' that served in Burma and India during 1943 and 1944

George Gould died on 30th April, 2003.