Vital Statistics
Charles Hildige Pinsent: 1914 – 1998 GRO1128 (Major, Indian Army and business manager, London)
Ethelwyn Phillipson: 1909 – 1990
Married: 1941: Jhansi, India
Family Branch: India
PinsentID: GRO1128
References
Charles Hildige Pinsent was born in Canada where his father, Harold Charles Frank Pinsent, was stationed during the “First World War.” Harold was a Royal Navy “Staff Paymaster and Secretary at the Department of Naval Services” who was in Ottawa, on Loan to the Canadian Navy in 1914. The family returned to England in 1919.
Charles Hildige Pinsent and his younger sister, Joan Constance Pinsent, grew up in-and-around Portsmouth, in Hampshire in the 1920s and 1930s. How much they saw of their father during this time I am not sure, as he must have been away on navy business – either serving at sea or at one of its many “stone frigates” or shore stations for much of this time. Presumably Harold was at sea when the 1921 census was taken as we find his wife Constance Amy Pinsent and her children were living with her parents, Frederick Graham and Ada Amy Hildige, on Worsley Road in Soutsea, Essex. Charles was at school and his younger sister, Joan, was four years old; nevertheless, the family employed a resident young “Childrens’ Nurse.”
Charles was sent to “Sherborne”, a well-respected “Public” (read “Private”) school in Dorset where, at the age eighteen, he earned a place at the “Royal Military College” at Sandhurst in Berkshire. He “passed out” as a prize-winning cadet in 1932 (Sherborne Register: 1925-2000). Charles was well aware of his Anglo-Indian forebears and he joined the “Indian Army”. The London Gazette (19th June 1936) shows that he was promoted from “Second” to “First Lieutenant” on 1st May 1936. I see Mr. Dallas Cole has placed a photograph of Charles Hildige Pinsent as a young officer in Indian Army regalia on-line (Ancestry.com)
Charles Pinsent, an “Army Officer of South Parade in Southsea near Portsmouth”, arrived in London on 8th April 1938. He arrived on “P & O. Co.” Steam Ship “Ranchi” from Bombay – presumably returning home on leave. Charles had returned to India before the start of the “Second World War” and “Lieut. Pinsent” was served as an “acting Captain” in the “13th Frontier Force Rifles” from 8th May to 7th August 1940. He was then designated a “temporary Captain,” and he was formally confirmed to the full rank of “Captain” on 1st February 1942 (London Gazette: 12th June 1942). It was the rank he held for remainder of the war.
In a discussion of the war in India published in 2003 (“Phoenix from the Ashes: The Indian Army in the Burma Campaign”), Daniel Marston describes how the “14th battalion of the 13th Frontier Rifles” was raised at Jhansi, south east of New Delhi, in April 1941. Evidently Major Pickard and Captain Pinsent (from the 1st battalion), as well as an ICO (from the 6th battalion), Lieutenant Bireshwar Nath received men from other units and built them into a fighting force and took them for desert warfare training. The unit was considered fit for overseas service in December 1941 and it joined the “34th Brigade” which was shipped to Ceylon (Sri Lanka): so much for the desert warfare training!
Charles Hildige Pinsent took time out to marry Ethelwyn Phillipson, in Jhansi, in the “Presidency of Bengal”, in 1941. I do not have the precise date (British India Office Ecclesiastical Returns: Findmypast). She had trained to be a nurse at the “Royal Hospital” in Wolverhampton from 1930 to 1933 (UK & Ireland, Nursing Registers: 1898-1968) and had been a “Ward Sister” at the “Royal Infirmary” in Worcester before the war (1939 Register). Ethelwyn joined the “Territorial Army Nursing Service” and went out to India, where she was granted a commission as a “Nursing Sister” on 30th May 1941 (London Gazette: 13th February 1942). They had no children that I am aware of. However, correspondence between Charles’s sister Joan Constance Nettleton and my father Doctor Robert John Francis Homfray Pinsent shows that they did adopt a daughter. I am not sure of her name.
Captain Pinsent left the army after India gained independence in August 1947. He retired back to England with the rank of “Major” in November 1948 (London Gazette: 19th November 1948). However, he remained on the army’s reserve list until 1964. I am not sure precisely when Charles returned to England; however, his wife was one of group of “Military Sponsored Personnel” that left Bombay and arrived in Southampton on “Union Castle Line” steam ship “Arundel Castle” on 2nd December 1947. (U.K. Incoming Passenger Lists: 1878-1960: Ancestry.com). The manifest shows that she was heading for her husband’s family home in Southsea, near Portsmouth. Ethelwyn was traveling with other military families. She did not have a daughter with her when she travelled, so perhaps they adopted one after their return.
Back in England, Charles and Ethelwyn settled on Underne Avenue in Brunswick Park, Barnet in north London. Charles became a manager for “Dickins & Jones” – a high-quality department store on Regent Street in central London (Sherborne Register). It had been acquired by “Harrods” in 1914 but had continued to function as a separate entity with branches in Epsom, Richmond and Milton Keynes until “Harrods” was itself was taken over by “House of Fraser” in 2005. Charles and Ethelwyn Pinsent lived on Underne Avenue from 1948 until at least 1965 (London, England, Electoral Registers: 1832 – 1965: Ancestry.com).
Ethelwyn died in Barnet, north London, in January 1990 and Charles Hildige died in Northampton, Northamptonshire in January 1998. Presumably, he was living near his sister, Joan Constance Nettleton (née Pinsent).
Family Tree
Grandparents
Grandfather: Charles Powell Tronson Pinsent: 1849 – 1904
Grandmother: Harriet Ann Soden: 1860 – 1949
Parents
Father: Harold Charles Frank Pinsent: 1884 – 1968
Mother: Constance Amy Hildige Johnson: 1886 – 1964
Father’s Siblings (Aunts, Uncles)
Gwendolyn Edith Mary Pinsent: 1880 – 1968
Frances Maud Pinsent: 1882 – 1962
Harold Charles Frank Pinsent: 1884 – 1968 ✔️
Phyllis Charlotte Pinsent: 1894 – 1981
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