Vital Statistics
Alfred Pinsent: 1848 – 1919 GRO0017 (Construction Trades Worker, London)
1. Matilda Churched: 1844 – 1888
Married: 1870: London
Children by Matilda Churched:
William C. “Pinsent”: 1866 – xxxx
Mary Caroline Pinsent: 1870 – 1945 (Married Frederick Charles Reeman, 1891, London)
Matilda Pinsent: 1873 – 1873
Amelia Elizabeth Pinsent: 1875 – xxxx (Married Unknown, 1896; Married Frederick Emmett, 1899, London)
Alfred Charles Pinsent: 1877 – 1948 (Married Mabel Winifred Davis, 1902, Walthamstow, Essex)
2. Charlotte James: 1838 – 1910
Married: 1890: London
Family Branch: Devonport
PinsentID: GRO0017
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Alfred Pinsent was the third surviving son of Charles Pinsent, a “cheese-monger” who lived in St. John’s Wood in London by his first wife, Mary Fullick. He grew up there and also in St. Marylebone where his father had a shop at #8 Queen’s Terrace. Alfred’s mother died in 1852 and his father had a devastating brush with bankruptcy the following year. He would have been six years old when his father remarried in 1854. An impoverished Charles and his second wife, Georgiana Caroline Pinsent, (née Henly) moved to #15 Little Norris Street in Hoxton in London.
Alfred’s elder brothers, Charles Pinsent and George Pinsent joined the “British East India Company Army” and shipped out to Bombay in 1859. Charles had died there in October 1862. His name appears on a casualty list issued in January 1863 (IOR Reference L/MIL/12/116). Perhaps that was too much for their father. He committed suicide in August 1863. Alfred, was a teenager living with his parents when it happened – as was a younger brother, Frederick and a half sister Georgiana Caroline Pinsent (from the second marriage).
Alfred became a “plasterer” and sometime “bricklayer” at a time when London was expanding rapidly to keep pace with the Nation’s growth in empire and its industrial revolution. There was a considerable amount of rebuilding too, now that the City father’s had been shamed into rebuilding the sewage system after the year of the “Great Stink” – 1858 – when the Thames ran low and waste accumulated on its banks. There was no shortage of work for people in the construction business.
Alfred married Matilda Churched in 1870. She was a “policeman’s” daughter. Interestingly, his brother George must have been back in London as signed the register as a witness. Elizabeth Pinsent did too. I am not sure who she was! Perhaps it was Charles’s widow, Eliza (née Holmes); however she had remarried in India several years earlier. Alfred and Matilda had a daughter, Mary Caroline Pinsent, a couple of months after the wedding and three more children in the years that followed. Matilda Pinsent, Amelia Elizabeth Pinsent and Alfred Charles Pinsent were born in 1873, 1875 and 1877 respectively.
The Census records shows that the family lived in Somers Town, in London in 1871 and that they had another son – “William C. Pinsent” – who would have been born in 1866. He could be an premarital son of Alfred’s; however, I think it is more likely that he was an illegitimate or earlier legitimate son of Matilda’s. I can find no other record of him.
Alfred’s middle daughter, Matilda, died at birth but his other daughters survived. They both attended “St. Andrew’s school” in Camden in 1881 (London, England, School Admissions and Discharges: 1840-1911: Ancestry.com]. According to that year’s Census records, Alfred was a “time keeper” for a builder, and he was living on Charles Street in the Hatton Garden area of London. Mary Caroline married a “cabinet-maker” in St. Barnabas Church in Homerton in March 1891.
Her sister Amelia Elizabeth, meanwhile, went on to become a “box-maker” in the mid 1890s. She had an illegitimate daughter, Ellen Matilda Pinsent at Hackney Infirmary in London in April 1897, but married Frederick Emmett, a “paper-hanger” two years later. Whether or not Ellen was Frederick’s daughter, I do not know. She drops out of sight; presumably having been absorbed into Mr. Emmett’s family.
Matilda (née Churched) died in 1888 and Alfred married Charlotte Carson (née James) two years later. She was in her early fifties so there were no children. The 1901 Census shows that Charlotte was a “tailoress” and that the couple lived on Cambridge Road in the Bethnal Green, in London. They had moved to Conyers Street, also in Bethnal Green, by 1910; which is when she died (London, England, Electoral Register 1847-1965: Ancestry.com).
Alfred is variously described as being a “general labourer”, a “carpenter”, a “plaster” and a “bricklayer”. Presumably he possessed all these skills and he passed some of them on to his son Alfred Charles Pinsent – who followed him into the construction trades. Alfred Charles settled in Walthamstow in Essex and his father joined him there after his second wife died. He was part of his son’s family when the Census takers came round in 1911. Alfred Pinsent died at the Union Infirmary at Kingston, in Surrey, in July 1919. His son’s life is discussed elsewhere.
Family Tree
GRANDPARENTS
Grandfather: Thomas Pinsent: 1754 – 1841
Grandmother: Elizabeth Pridham: 1763 – 1821
PARENTS
Father: Charles Pinsent: 1812 – 1863
Mother: Mary Fullick: 1812 – 1852
FATHER’S SIBLINGS (AUNTS, UNCLES)
Maria Pinsent: 1797 – 1864
John Pinsent: 1799 – 1870
William Pinsent: 1808 – xxxx
George Pinsent: 1814 – 1894
MALE SIBLINGS (BROTHERS)
Thomas Pinsent: 1836 – 1838
Charles Pinsent: 1837 – 1862
George Pinsent: 1840 – 1875
Henry James Pinsent: 1850 – 1853
Frederick Pinsent: 1852 – 1929
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