George Handforth was the husband of Mary who was in Weatherfield General for the expected birth of their fourth child. Also in the same ward was Deirdre Langton who was there for what turned out to be a false alarm that her and Ray's baby, Tracy, was due.
George was a butcher who was hoping for another boy, although their youngest child, Andrea, was the favourite of his current three. Mary thought that he only wanted another boy to help him run his shop. On a visit to the hospital, he brought in a couple of chops for Mary which caused her to snap at his suggestion that she could get them cooked in the hospital kitchen. She was even more perturbed by the news that his step sister Stella had been in the house as Mary knew full well that she would be going through all of their things. Earlier, Mary had told visitor Ena Sharples that when their eldest David had been born, post-natal care and procedures in hospitals were very different and husbands were taken en masse to the crèche where the babies were held up by a nurse to be seen by the father through a window. George had likened this to his butcher's shop where he held up cuts of meat to be approved by the housewives prior to purchase!