Vital Statistics
James Pinsent: 1831 – 1902 GRO0453
Emma Jackson: 1831 – 1903
Married: 1856: Nottingham, Nottinghamshire
Children by Emma Jackson:
Hannah Martha Pinsent: 1857 – xxxx (Married William Sherwin Ward, 1876, Leicester, Leicestershire)
Georgiana Pinsent: 1859 – 1925 (Married Charles Henry Spencer Jones, 1879, Leicester, Leicestershire)
James Pinsent: 1862 – 1936 (Married (1) Emma Elizabeth Poxon: Leicester, Leicestershire 1884; (2) Emma Hubbard, Sneinton, Nottinghamshire)
Adrian Pinsent: 1864 – 1945 (Married Hannah West, 1887, Barrow upon Soar, Leicestershire)
Fanny Pinsent: 1866 – 1940 (Married Benjamin Scott, 1885, Leicester, Leicestershire)
Charlotte Ann Pinsent: 1868 – xxxx (Married James Smith, 1907, Leicester, Leicestershire)
Emily Pinsent: 1870 – xxxx (Alfred William Goodman, 1893, Leicester, Leicestershire)
Arthur Edwin Pinsent: 1872 – 1938 (Married Lizzie Memory, 1901, Leicester, Leicestershire)
Family Branch: Tiverton
PinsentID: GRO0453
James was the third son of Thomas Pinsent by his wife Hannah (née Johnson). He was born in Tiverton, in Devon, in 1831 but grew up in Leicestershire after his father, who was a “cordwainer” (shoemaker), moved there in around 1834. Leicestershire was at the heart of England’s growing leather processing and shoe manufacturing business. Thomas and Hannah had eleven children but several died young. At the time of the 1841 Census, the Pinsent family was living on Holland Street, in Loughborough.
There is very little known about Thomas’s children’s early life; however, we do know that James and two of his friends (John Dexter and George Parnell) came to the attention of the magistrates while still teenagers. They were convicted of breaking up a gentleman’s fence in September 1844. Whether they did so out of malice or for the sake of fire-wood isn’t stated. George and James were fined 2s 6d apiece at the Local “Petty Session.” John Dexter had to pay 5s – perhaps he was the eldest of the boys, or may be he was deemed to be the ringleader (Leicester Chronicle: Saturday 5th October 1844).
James was, inevitably, drawn into the shoe-making business and he too was a “cordwainer” when the census was next taken, in 1851. His elder siblings had moved out of the family home by then, and James was living on Barrow Street, in Loughborough, with his parents and five younger brothers and sisters.
James married Emma Jackson in Nottingham in 1856 but they lived in Loughborough, and they had their first four children (two girls: Hannah Martha Pinsent and Georgiana Pinsent, and two boys: James Pinsent and Adrian Pinsent – A.K.A. George Adrian Pinsent) while they were there. The family moved to Leicester in 1865, and they added another more four children (three girls: Fanny Pinsent, Charlotte Ann Pinsent and Emily Pinsent, and one boy: Arthur Edwin Pinsent) to their growing family. They were living on Syston Street, near Belgrave Gate in St. Margaret’s Parish, in 1871, when the Census-takers came knocking, and were still there when they returned in 1881.
In those days, most children went to school until the age of twelve, after which they were then sent out to work – the boys in the shoe industry and the girls in either the shoe or else one of the cloth industries. Martha was a “fancy hand” in 1871. Ten years later, in 1881, James Pinsent (“junior”) was a “shoe-finisher”, Adrian a “shoe riveter”; their sister Fanny worked in a shoe stockroom and Charlotte was an “assistant shoe machinist”.
Remarkably, all eight of James and Emma’s children married. The three boys, James Pinsent, Adrian Pinsent and Arthur Edwin Pinsent then stayed on in the shoe-trade and each of them had children to further the family line. Their lives are discussed elsewhere.
The girls also married. Charlotte married late – in 1907. She wed a widowed “hosiery trimmer” when she was thirty-seven years old. Presumably she had stayed home to look after her parents. Unfortunately, her father was an inmate of the Leicester “Workhouse” in 1901 (Census) and he died of cancer in the hospital there the following year. Charlotte, meanwhile, was living with her mother and her younger brother, Arthur. She was a “shoe machinist” in 1901. Arthur Pinsent was a “commission agent working on his own account.” What ever that was. Arthur married shortly after the census was taken, and Emma died at their then home, on Westbourne Street, in 1903. This freed Charlotte up to marry and she did so.
Family Tree
GRANDPARENTS
Grandfather: James Pinsent: 1769 – 1833
Grandmother: Hannah Brimson: 1766 – xxxx
PARENTS
Father: Thomas Pinsent: 1795 – 1860
Mother: Hannah Johnson: 1800 – 1871
FATHER’S SIBLINGS (AUNTS, UNCLES)
William Pinsent: 1792 – 1844
Thomas Pinsent: 1795 – 1860 ✔️
Anne Pinsent: 1799 – 1801
Richard Pinsent: 1799 – xxxx
Fanny Pinsent: 1804 – xxxx
Jane Pinsent: 1804 – xxxx
MALE SIBLINGS (BROTHERS)
William Pinsent: 1822 – xxxx
Thomas Pinsent: 1824 – 1831
James Pinsent: 1831 – 1902 ✔️
John Pinsent: 1836 – 1899
Henry Pinsent: 1838 – 1846
George Pinsent: 1839 – 1857
Charles Pinsent: 1842 – 1882
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