He died, as we know, in Edmonton, in 1909. Hence his second daughter and family were very much in the area as he entered the final years of his life, apparently either powerless or unwilling to do anything about his ongoing state of penury. It was thus left to the Bostock family, who had taken over the menagerie by this time to provide George with a small additional stipend to keep the wolf away.
It could be of course that there had been a rupture between George and Amelia Gertrude as a consequence of her inter-faith marriage, but with a large family of their own, and just a tailoring business to support themselves, it is doubtful whether they had too much to offer George junior beyond tolerating his tales of the glory days of the Wombwell menagerie, and his half-century long run of bad luck.
As for George himself, he had if nothing else lived a full and eventful life. Born in 1822 in the reign of George IV, his adult life spanned the entire reign of Queen Victoria, along with the extraordinary imperial and economic expansion that accompanied it. It was a time of opportunity, speculation and entrepreneurship, but also an era that was unforgiving of failure, as George junior was to experience to his cost.
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