Description:This is an abridged biography from The Handsworth Magazine, the full version is available as a download. Councillor Adkins address in 1900 is given as 35 Linwood Road in Handsworth.
He was born at West Bromwich, but almost his earliest recollections are of Handsworth, his father the late William Adkins, coming to reside here in 1856, when Samuel was a boy of four. That he has witnessed many and surprising changes during the forty-one years of his residence in Handsworth goes without saying.
The population of the parish was then well under 10,000 and green meadows and fragrant orchards and gardens flourished where now are busy shops and crowded streets. Today Handsworth has a population of 43,000 and cannot afford to rhapsodise over its truly rural beauties any longer. Where the famous Cornwall Works now stand Mr Adkins has fished in a stream for minnows, exploited an orchard for its celebrated apples and run up centuries at cricket.
Ere he had reached his teens Samuel Adkins was engaged at the Manchester Works (now the Surrey Works), Smethwick, where the steel was rolled, which afterwards did duty in the crinolines worn by the ladies of that period. He changed his situation several times to better himself; as the phrase goes and was at one time employed at Soho Foundry (James Watt & Co, Engineers). In 1869 he went to work at the Birmingham Plate Glass Works, Smethwick, and where in February 1870 he met with an accident which necessitated his removal to the General Hospital, where his injuries were attended to and his arm eventually amputated by Dr Oliver Pemberton, who afterwards became Coroner for Birmingham. Among his assistants was Dr Welch, late Medical Officer of Health for Handsworth. Each doctor kept a niche in his memory for the patient and as recently as the beginning of last year Mr Pemberton wrote to Mr Adkins a congratulatory letter on his prosperity in business and election in the District Council.
Whilst lying in the hospital ward young Adkins procured copy-books and pen and ink and gallantly set himself the task of learning to write legibly with the left hand. He was soon able to use the pen as deftly and neatly with his left hand as most calligraphers can with their right and ultimately obtained a situation in the office of the Birmingham Plate Glass Works. In 1874 the Plate Glass Works became the property of Messrs. Chance, who closed them entirely in 1877. Adkins was by this time a married man and had two children. He was one of a hundred applicants for a situation as wages clerk and obtained the appointment, filling up his spare time by teaching shorthand.
In 1883 he commenced in the insurance business as agent for a great company and in this has been remarkably successful.
Many of our readers know him best perhaps as a clever and practical local preacher. He is a Primitive Methodist and has for many years associated himself with the little chapel Street, formerly called Connexion Street. The chapel has prospered. When Mr Adkins first attended, it was a room over a cellar which had always a few feet of water in it. The damp room in Chapel Street became metamorphosed into a snug little chapel capable of holding quite fifty persons. William Adkins, the father of our subject, who was one of the first converts to Primitive Methodism in the district, started a Sunday School and filled the treble role of superintendent, teacher and secretary.
Samuel Adkins followed in the footsteps of his sire and yielding to the persuasion of his friends, decided to try his fortune as a local preacher, preaching his trial sermons before the ministers of the circuit and becoming a duly qualified lay parson in 1879. A minister being appointed to the circuit with whom he could not work harmoniously he, a few years later, drifted away from Chapel Street and joined the Asbury Memorial Chapel, a sermon in that place of worship by the Rev. John Hartley, the Governor of Handsworth College at that time, having profoundly affected him.