a history
Birth: 1631 (née Philippa Wilmeade)
Spouse: John Pinsent (xxxx), John Soper (1665)
Death: N/A
Family Branch: Devonport
PinsentID: GRO1734
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Birth: 1897
Marriage: N/A
Spouse: N/A
Death: 1916
Family Branch: Devonport
PinsentID: GRO0774
Grandfather: Richard Steele Pinsent: 1820 – 1864
Grandmother: Catherine Agnes Ross: 1830 – 1906
Father: Richard Alfred Pinsent: 1852 – 1948
Mother: Laura Proctor Ryland: 1855 – 1931
Adolphus Ross Pinsent: 1851 – 1929
Richard Alfred Pinsent: 1852 – 1948
Edith Mary Pinsent: 1853 – xxxx
Hume Chancellor Pinsent: 1857 – 1920
Roy Pinsent: 1883 – 1978
Clive Pinsent: 1886 – 1948
John Ryland Pinsent: 1888 – 1957
Laurence Alfred Pinsent: 1894 – 1915
Philip Ryland Pinsent: 1897 – 1916
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Paul Desmond Pinsent: 1915 – 1997 GRO0712 (Engineer and Businessman, Buenos Aires)
Constance Kathleen Hamilton Heneghan: 1918 – 2003
Married: 1941: London
Children by Constance Kathleen Hamilton Heneghan:
Daughter (GRO0660)
Daughter (GRO0367)
Daughter (GRO0552)
Daughter (GRO1089)
Family Branch: Devonport
PinsentID: GRO0712
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Paul Desmond was the second son of Sidney Hume Pinsent by his wife, Beatrice Elena Le Bas. He was born in Rosario, in the Province of Santa Fe in Argentina. His father registered his birth at the local “British Consulate” as he was a British Subject. Paul was brought up in Argentina and then sent to a (now, I believe, closed) Catholic “preparatory school” at Lady Cross in East Sussex. From there, he joining his brothers at “Downside,” a major Catholic “Public” (private) School at Stretton in the Fosse, in Somerset. Paul Desmond and his brothers Harold Ross and Roger Philip had left “Downside” by the time their younger brother Neville James Quintus went there.
Ship Manifests now available on-line (ancestry.com), show that Paul and his brothers made several trips back and forth between Argentina and England in the 1930s. However, it was a long way to go and they probably spent a considerable amount of time with their grandfather, Adolphus Ross Pinsent, his second wife Ethel Mary Philomena Whitelaw and their son Basil Hume Pinsent at their home in Kent. Basil was also sent to “Downside” school and was there alongside Paul and his elder brother Harold. The Argentinian boys continued to refer to Tunbridge Wells as their “home” after their grandfather died (in 1929), and it was from there that Paul Desmond married Constance Kathleen Hamilton Heneghan, in 1941. She was the daughter of “medical practitioner”.
At the outset of the “Second World War” Desmond was a university student living on Richmond Hill Road, in Birmingham (1939 Register). He received a degree in “Mechanical Engineering” at “Birmingham University” and joined the “Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve” as a “Lieutenant (Engineering)” on 21st January 1940. Naval Records show that he was attached to “H.M.S. Dorsetshire” (a ” County-Class cruiser”) on 24th December 1940. The ship is best known for having sunk the German pocket-battleship “Bismarck” with torpedoes after it had been crippled by allied action in the South Atlantic in May 1941. Naval records also show that he was transferred to “H.M.S. Kent” (another “cruiser”) in June 1941, after a few months leave during which he had got married. The cruiser spent the later part of 1941 and much of 1942 on the Murmansk run- protecting convoys to and from Russia. Presumably he was on board when “H.M.S. Kent” took the Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, to Murmansk to meet up with Comrade Stalin. Paul served on “H.M.S. Kent” until October 1943. His last wartime assignment was as Chief Engineer on “H.M.S. Liddesdale” (a “destroyer”). He was on board during the relief of Greece in August 1945, and received a mention in the dispatches.
Paul and Constance lived at “65 Elgin Crescent” in London during and immediately after the war, and three of their daughters were born while they lived there. After leaving the Navy, Paul joined the English affiliate of the American (“Engineering”) firm “Babcock and Wilcox;” a company that was then, and still is, actively involved in generating electricity. The Company paid for Paul to visit its head office in New York before sending him down to Argentina. He left Liverpool on the “S.S. Franconia” and arrived in New York on 28th October 1946. Constance, meanwhile, took her three daughters straight to Buenos Aires. They left Southampton on the “Royal Mail Lines Ltd.” ship “Alcantara” on the 7th November 1946.
Paul and Constance had their fourth daughter while in Argentina. The family returned to England for a visit in 1949. They left Buenos Aires on the “Blue Star Line” ship “Argentina Star” and arrived in London on 15th December. They stayed for four months, and then returned on the “Blue Star Line” ship “Uruguay Star”. Paul was still working for “Babcock and Wilcox.” The next family trip back seems to have been in 1954. On this occasion, Paul brought his elderly parents, Sidney Hume and mother, Beatrice Elena, with him. They arrived in Southampton in May 1954 on the “Royal Mail Ltd.” ship “Alcantara.” Presumably they all returned to Buenos Aires a few months later.
An item (in Spanish) in the “Boletin Oficial de la Republica Argentina, 1971 2da-seccion”, seems to show that Paul was the authorized “agent” for his brother, Harold Ross Pinsent in regard to some business he had with “Babcock and Wilcox” in 1971.
Constance visited Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, with her eldest daughter in 1961 and their visa applications are available through the Ancestry.com website. The documents include their photographs. Paul Desmond continued to work in Argentina – and to indulge his hobby of playing with vintage cars. He can be seen in a photograph driving a 1928 era, “4 ½ litre, Bentley” (#HF3139) in the “BDC Review 126, November 1977”: (vintagebentley.org). I am sure he would have loved to find one of his father’s “Lanchesters”. Paul Desmond Pinsent died in Buenos Aires in 1997 and his wife Constance Kathleen died there a few years later, in 2003. Their daughters seem to have stayed on in South America. At least three of them married and had children of their own. They are probably still alive today.
Grandfather: Adolphus Ross Pinsent: 1851 – 1929
Grandmother: Alice Mary Nuttall: 1855 – 1901
Father: Sidney Hume Pinsent: 1878 – 1969
Mother: Beatrice Elena Le Bas: 1882 – 1956
Sidney Hume Pinsent: 1879 – 1969 ✔️
Frances Maude Pinsent: 1882 – 1953
Cecil Ross Pinsent: 1884 – 1963
Gerald Hume Saverie Pinsent: 1888 – 1976
Basil Hume Pinsent: 1911 – 2000
Harold Ross Pinsent: 1913 – 1988
Paul Desmond Pinsent: 1915 – 1997 ✔️
Roger Philip Pinsent: 1916 – 1997
Neville James Quintus Pinsent: 1921 – 2013
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Birth: 1921 (née Atteridge)
Marriage: 1942
Spouse: Basil Hume Pinsent
Death: 1997
Family Branch: Devonport
PinsentID: GRO1101
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Birth: 1847
Marriage: N/A
Spouse: N/A
Death: N/A
Family Branch: Devonport
PinsentID: GRO0704
Unknown was the daughter of George Pinsent and Elizabeth Leatt. We do not know her name.
Grandfather: Thomas Pinsent: 1754 – 1841
Grandmother: Elizabeth Pridham: 1763 – 1821
Father: George Pinsent: 1814 – 1894
Mother: Elizabeth Leatt: 1822 – 1890
Anna Thomasin Crout Pinsent: 1777 – 1799
Thomas Pinsent: 1779 – 1779
Thomas Pinsent: 1782 – 1872
Elizabeth Pinsent: 1789 – xxxx
Maria Pinsent: 1797 – 1864
John Pinsent: 1799 – 1870
William Pinsent: 1808 – xxxx
Charles Pinsent: 1812 – 1863
George Pinsent: 1814 – 1894
George Henry Pinsent: 1844 – 1915
Thomas Charles Pinsent: 1845 – 1868
William John Pinsent: 1848 – 1849
Walter Pinsent: 1860 – 1863
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Neville James Quintus Pinsent: 1921 – 2013 GRO1095 (Electrical Engineer, South America)
1. Rosemary Chiswell: 1926 – 1997
Married: 1949: Buenos Aires
Children by Rosemary Chiswell:
Daughter (GRO1097)
Daughter (GRO0410)
Son (GRO1098)
2. Maria Luisa Paez: 1930 – 2007
Married: 1972: Caracas (Venezuela)
Family Branch: Devonport
PinsentID: GRO1095
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Sidney Hume’s fourth son by Beatrice Elena Le Bas, Neville James Quintus Pinsent was born in Buenos Aires. His English father registered his birth with the British Consul. Neville and his brothers grew up in Argentina but made several trips “home” to England while they were still young boys. Neville, like his brother Paul Desmond before him, attended “Ladycross School”, a private (Catholic) “Preparatory” School before going to “Downside”, a major (Catholic) “Public” (private) school at Stretton on the Fosse, in Somerset. He was considerably younger than his brothers and they had left “Downside” by the time he arrived.
We know from Ship Manifests’ that Neville’s mother Beatrice (née Le Bas) brought her children, Neville James Quintus, Paul Desmond, Roger Philip and Joyce Veronica back from the Argentine in 1927. They disembarked from the “Royal Mail Line” ship “Andes” at Southampton in July that year – probably bound for Tunbridge Wells, in Kent, where Neville’s grandfather lived with his second wife – or at least he did so before he died in 1929. Neville’s eldest brother, Harold Ross may well have already been in Kent, as he was a similar age to Neville’s grandfather’s son from the second marriage Basil Hume Pinsent. The two of them were at “Downside” together.
Beatrice and her family returned to Buenos Aires on the “Royal Mail Line” ship “Alcantara” in February 1928. However, she must have brought her children back later that same year as some of them had schools to attend. She brought her younger children, Neville and Joyce, back from Argentina in December 1929. On that occasion, they arrived at Southampton on the “Royal Mail Line” ship “Asturias”. Both children were, by then, classified as “students”. They went back to Buenos Aires on the same ship in February 1930. Two years later, in December 1932, it was Neville and his mother who arrived in Southampton on the “S.S. Asturias”. Neville would have been eleven years old and shortly to be enrolled at “Downside”. He was unquestionably a “student” there in June 1936 (Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette: 20th June 1936) and in 1937 and, he graduated with passes in French, English, History and, importantly, Applied Mechanics in 1938 (Western Morning News: 6th September 1938).
Neville was still considered a “student” when he sailed to Buenos Aires on the “Royal Mail Lines” ship “Highland Princess” in September 1939 – this was just as the war in Europe was starting. He studied engineering. I do not know where but probably in Buenos Aires. He graduated as an “Illuminating (Electrical?) Engineer.” He must have made it back to the United Kingdom somehow as he joined the “Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve” as an “ordinary Seaman” in 1941.
Why he failed to join as an officer, I do not know. Perhaps the navy was skeptical of his foreign credentials, or perhaps he was not prepared to take the time it took to train to serve as an officer. He was assigned to “H.M.S. Cumberland” – a county class “cruiser” in 1941 and 1942. The ship had previously gained fame participating in the “Battle of the River Plate,” which had led to the scuttling of the German pocket-battleship “Admiral Graf Spree.” Neville’s time on board the “H.M.S. Cumberland” cannot have been a particularly pleasant as its principal task was escorting convoys to Murmansk in the Russian Arctic. He became an “Acting Temporary Lieutenant (Special Branch)” in June 1941, and was sent on an “Officer Training Course” in Hove, Sussex, the following year. After that, the “powers-that-be” gave him a warmer assignment. They sent him to serve on “Defense Equipped Merchant Ships” in the Mediterranean and from there he transferred to the gunnery training ship “H.M.S. Foinavon,” in 1943.
In 1944, Neville took a “flight controllers'” course at the “Royal Navy Air Station” at Yeovilton, in Somerset. Many years later (in 2008) the Navy invited him back to see how the place had changed over 64 years (Oxford Mail: 17th December 2008). He compared the modern living conditions that he saw with the rather primitive set up that he and his contemporaries had to endure, and said he was impressed by the technology used to handle and control modern fighters. After his training, Neville was attached to the “Royal Air Force” as a “Night Fighter Controller” at St. Abbs Head in Scotland for a few months before moving to “H.M.S. Colossus” in November 1944. It was a newly commissioned “aircraft carrier” that was sent out join the Pacific fleet but arrived too late to take much part in the “Second World War”. It spent its time in clean-up duty – largely repatriating prisoners of war and internees. Neville was promoted to full “Lieutenant” at the end of December 1944. The “ordinary seaman” certainly made his contribution to the war effort! Sadly, the ship was laid off on its return to Britain in 1946.
Neville left the navy (Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve (RNVR) Officers 1939-1945) and returned to Buenos Aires. He sailed from London on the “Royal Mail Lines” ship “Highland Monarch” in April 1946. By then, he was an experienced “electrical engineer” and he probably went out to look into job opportunities as well as to see his family. He returned England and then made a similar trip to Argentina on the “Blue Star Line” ship “Brazil Star” in April 1948. This time, he may have planned to stay. Neville James Quintus married Rosemary Chiswell in Buenos Aires, in 1949. They had a son and two daughters who were presumably brought up in South America.
Neville and Rosemary arrived in Southampton from Buenos Aires on “Royal Mail lines” ship “Andes” on 3rd April 1952. On this occasion, they were home for a visit, bringing their daughter who was then just one year old. Rosemary returned to Argentina with her daughter on “Royal Mail Lines” ship “Highland Chieftain” in September the same year. Neville had probably planned to go with them, but something must have cropped up as his name was crossed out of the Manifest.
Neville left New York with his wife and daughter on the Cunard Steam ship “Mauretania” and arrived in England on 1st May 1956. Neville gave his contact address as c/o “G.E.C. Limited” (a major British Electrical Company that was then in the process of moving into radio transmission). Presumably he had business with the company, which was then based at “Magnet House, London W.C.2”. Rosemary was pregnant a the time, and their second daughter was born in Croydon a couple of months later. In November, Rosemary flew back to New York with her two young daughters. This may have been to visit her parents.
Neville worked for “Sylvania Electric Products Inc.” in Caracas, Venezuela in 1958. The Company’s head office (“Sylvania International”) was in Sao Paulo, in Brazil, and the Brazilian Government issued Neville with a three-month tourist visa for a visit there that year. The Company also sent him on a trip to Bermuda in January 1959. This was the year that the “Sylvania” (which made radios and television tubes), merged with “General Telephones” and became part of “General Telephones and Electronics Limited” (G.T.E.), a large conglomerate. Brazilian visas (with photographs attached) show that Neville and his family formally moved to Sao Paulo in May 1960. Rosemary arrived pregnant and she had their third child while they were there. This probably explains why Neville’s father, Sidney Hume Pinsent, was down for a visit the following year!
At some point, probably in 1967, Neville and Rosemary divorced. Rosemary stayed on in Sao Paulo and died there in January 1997. Neville seems to have returned to Venezuela, as he married Maria Luisa Paez Bohorquerez, in Caracas, in 1972. They had no children.
Neville and Maria returned to England and settled in Abington, in Berkshire, in 1980. By then, he would have been 59 years old. Maria Luisa died in 2007. Neville Pinsent turned 90 in 2011, so they had a family celebration in Oxford. The event seems to have been partially organized by Father Andrew Pinsent a physicist turned Roman Catholic priest. Presumably they met Neville through their common interest in the Roman Catholic Church. He is from a different branch of the same [DEVONPORT] family. He belongs to a line that broke-off six generation earlier. Neville died two years later, in October 2013. His son married and now has a son so the line should continue.
Grandfather: Adolphus Ross Pinsent: 1851 – 1929
Grandmother: Alice Mary Nuttall: 1855 – 1901
Father: Sidney Hume Pinsent: 1878 – 1969
Mother: Beatrice Elena Le Bas: 1882 – 1956
Sidney Hume Pinsent: 1879 – 1969
Frances Maude Pinsent: 1882 – 1953
Cecil Ross Pinsent: 1884 – 1963
Gerald Hume Saverie Pinsent: 1888 – 1976
Basil Hume Pinsent: 1911 – 2000
Harold Ross Pinsent: 1913 – 1988
Paul Desmond Pinsent: 1915 – 1997
Roger Philip Pinsent: 1916 – 1997
Neville James Quintus Pinsent: 1921 – 2013
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Birth: 1872
Marriage: 1897
Spouse: William Henry Pinsent
Death: 1937
Family Branch: Devonport
PinsentID: GRO0695
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Birth: 1890
Marriage: 1915
Spouse: Albert Abraham Burton
Death: N/A
Family Branch: Devonport
PinsentID: GRO0694
Minnie was the illegitimate daughter of Alice Amy Pinsent.
Minnie, her mother, and her sister (Sophia Mary Pinsent) are discussed briefly in her grandfather’s biography: George Pinsent: 1814 – 1894
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Birth: 1856
Marriage: N/A
Spouse: N/A
Death: N/A
Family Branch: Devonport
PinsentID: GRO1245
Minnie’s name is sometimes documented as “Mary”.
Grandfather: John Pinsent: 1799 – 1870
Grandmother: Mary Ann Todd: 1799 – 1874
Father: William Pinsent: 1825 – xxxx
Mother: Clara E. T. Unknown: xxxx – xxxx
Elizabeth Pinsent: 1822 – 1896
Thomas Pinsent: 1823 – 1825
William Pinsent: 1825 – xxxx
John Pinsent: 1826 – 1914
John W. Pinsent: 1854 – xxxx
William Pinsent: 1873 – xxxx
Charles Pinsent: 1874 – xxxx
Frank Pinsent: 1875 – xxxx
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Birth: 1909
Marriage: 1928
Spouse: Samuel Leslie Priestwick
Death: 2007
Family Branch: Devonport
PinsentID: GRO0692
Minnie Pinsent was the illegitimate daughter of Sophia Mary Pinsent. Sophia was, herself, the illegitimate daughter of Alice Amy Pinsent.
Minnie, her mother, and her grandmother are discussed briefly in her great-grandfather’s biography: George Pinsent: 1814 – 1894
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