Victor the stalwart solicitor was still going strong as a 90-year-old

We doubt it as Victor Grunhut was still working as a solicitor when he was 90 years old, 65 years ago this year.

‘I shall go on working until I am forced to retire’

And he had been doing the job since way back in 1893.

At the age of 90, he told the Shields Gazette that had no intention of calling it a day.

Mr Grunhut was the principal of the firm Grunhut, Grunhut and Makepeace and back in 1960, he was believed to be the oldest practising solicitor in England.

“I shall go on working until I am forced to retire, ” he told a reporter on his 90th birthday.

‘Weighty tomes and deed boxes’

We interviewed him in an office which the Gazette journalist described as ‘flanked by weighty tomes and deed boxes soaked in a Dickensian atmosphere.

Victor looked back to his earliest days when he was an eager young articled clerk and worked his way through the ranks.

He admitted to finding South Shields Magistrates’ Court an “awesome place”.

Hardy men on the court bench

The solicitors, he said, were a “rough lot”, and there were some “hardy men” on the bench.

“That’s why I had so many rows with the justices in those days, ” he said.

He had his say on the causes of juvenile crime in the 1960s and said it was down partly to parents, adding: “Girls and boys had not the opportunity for going astray in my time that they have now.”

During the First World War, he was a major in the 4th Northumberland Howitzer Brigade on the Western Front.

Tell us about the modern day ‘Victors’ in South Tyneside

Asked the inevitable question about what he considered to be the secret for a long life, he replied: “I have no secret. I smoke, and I am not teetotal.”

After an illustrious career, he lived until 1962 when he died aged 92.

Tell us if you know of someone is still going strong in their 80s or 90s in the South Tyneside area.

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