George Woodage (1844-1911) is described in the Censuses as an Oil and Colourman or an Oilman’s manager.

The oil and colourman originally dealt chiefly in colours and paints, plus the oils for mixing them. The title colourman indicates that he also dealt in pigments and mixed his own oil paints, grinding the pigment and mixing it with the oils. Over the years such shops widened their range of products to include a variety of household goods such as candles and soaps, starch, matches, paraffin, dyes, rock salt, firewood, brushes, baskets and brooms, lamps, linseed and other oils, beeswax and vegetable wax. Very often the range would also extend to some grocery items such as sauces, pickles and jams, and to chemicals and drugs such as soda, salts, quack pills and poor man’s plaster and a miscellaneous mixture of other commodities including hardware, ironmongery, china, lamp-black, size, ochre, chalk, sand, gunpowder and shot.

Oil had to be kept outside at the back of the shop and a common trick was for one boy to ask for oil and another to rifle the shop while the oil was being measured.

One of George’s sons, Albert Jerrard Woodage (1881-1940) was recorded in 1901 as being an oilman’s assistant so he probably worked at the same shop.