a history
Birth: 1953 (née Judith Ann Lidgett)
Marriage: N/A
Spouse: Husband (GRO1662)
Death: 2005
Family Branch: Tiverton
PinsentID: GRO1712
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Birth: N/A
Marriage: N/A
Spouse: N/A
Death: N/A
Family Branch: Tiverton
PinsentID: GRO0629
Grandfather: James Pinsent: 1837 – 1912
Grandmother: Sarah Savage: 1839 – 1914
Father: George Hibbard Pinsent: 1879 – 1953
Mother: Amelia P. Unknown: 1883 – 1958
George James Pinsent: 1859 – 1860
James Walter Pinsent: 1861 – 1948
Sarah Lydia Pinsent: 1863 – 1942
Joseph Benjamin Pinsent: 1865 – 1897
Louisa Mary Pinsent: 1867 – xxxx
William John Pinsent: 1869 – 1918
Martha Elizabeth Pinsent: 1871 – xxxx
Thomas Henry Pinsent: 1873 – 1910
Georgina Frances Pinsent: 1875 – xxxx
Albert Hibbard Pinsent: 1878 – 1878
Edward Charles Pinsent: 1878 – 1878
George Hibbard Pinsent: 1879 – 1953
Alexander Sidney Pinsent: 1884 – 1911
Roy J. Pinsent: 1912 – 1975
Clifford George Pinsent: 1916 – 2002
Herbert Frederick Pinsent: 1917 – 1992
Albert Pinsent: xxxx – xxxx
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Birth: N/A (née Edna Gray)
Marriage: 1940
Spouse: Herbert Frederick Pinsent
Death: N/A
Family Branch: Tiverton
PinsentID: GRO1167
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Harry Pinsent: 1877 – 1905 GRO0405
Florence Hannah Clayton: 1878 – xxxx
Married: 1899: Leicester, Leicestershire
Children by Florence Hannah Clayton:
Harry Pinsent: 1899 – 1900
Margaret Pinsent: 1904 – 1904
Family Branch: Tiverton
PinsentID: GRO0405
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Harry Pinsent was Thomas Johnson Pinsent’s younger son by his first wife, Sarah Ann Ellis. He may have been baptized as “Henry” but he seems to have been known as “Harry”. He was born in Leicester and was five years old when his mother died in 1882.
His father remarried the following year and he, like his elder brother, John Arthur Pinsent, seems to have had difficulty adjusting. The Census (1891) records show that Harry was sent to live with his maternal grandfather, Benjamin Ellis, on Bow Street.
Benjamin was a foreman in the shoe trade and it may have been a strategic move – as it enabled Harry (14) to train as a “shoe finisher” alongside his older cousins Edwin Ellis (25) and Arthur Ellis (17).
By then (1891) Harry’s father was a “hairdresser” living on Catherine Road in Leicester with his second wife Caroline (née Deakin) and his daughter from his first, Emma Louise Pinsent (11). The household also included Robert E. “Pinsent”, who appears to be one of Caroline’s sons from an earlier marriage. If so, he is not a “Pinsent” at all.
Harry Pinsent, “of Bow Street” was fined 10s for using obscene language in Abbey Lane in May 1894 (Leicester Chronicle: Saturday 5th May 1894), and was sentenced to fourteen days in jail for re-offending a few weeks later (Leicester Chronicle: Saturday 2nd June 1894).
Harry married a “hosiery artisan” Florence Hannah Clayton, in 1899 and they had a son, also called Harry Pinsent later the same year. Sadly, he died within a year. The couple had a daughter, Margaret Pinsent a few years later but she died at birth.
According to the Census records, Harry’ sister Jane Pinsent was living next door to the couple, on Bedford Road, in 1901. The couple moved to Syston Street, where Harry died of tuberculosis (age 27) in 1905. He was a “shoe-finisher.” His widow, Florence Hannah (Clayton), was unencumbered by children by then and she remarried the following year. She married a “labourer”, Samuel Saywell.
Grandfather: John Pinsent: 1836 – 1899
Grandmother: Elizabeth Johnson: 1837 – 1909
Father: Thomas Johnson Pinsent: 1856 – 1925
Mother: Sarah Ann Ellis: 1858 – 1882
Sarah Jane Pinsent: 1855 – 1855
Thomas Johnson Pinsent: 1856 – 1925 ✔️
John Henry Pinsent: 1858 – 1861
George Pinsent: 1861 – 1932
Eliza Pinsent: 1863 – xxxx
Louisa Pinsent: 1865 – 1945
Ada Pinsent: 1867 – xxxx
John Arthur Pinsent: 1869 – 1930
Henry Pinsent: 1871 – 1939
William Horace Pinsent: 1874 – 1876
Horace Pinsent: 1879 – 1949
John Arthur Pinsent: 1875 – 1942
Harry Pinsent: 1877 – 1905 ✔️
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Birth: 1889 (née Mabel Braimridge)
Marriage: 1910
Spouse: Ernest Pinsent
Death: 1982
Family Branch: Tiverton
PinsentID: GRO1845
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Birth: 1908(née Minnie Copsey)
Spouse: Harry Pinsent (1954), Charles Joseph Hodson (1963)
Death: 1998
Family Branch: Tiverton
PinsentID: GRO0693
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Birth: 1805
Marriage: N/A
Spouse: N/A
Death: N/A
Family Branch: Tiverton
PinsentID: GRO1418
Grandfather: Thomas Pinsent: 1738 – 1825
Grandmother: Anne Wright: 1740 – 1815
Father: Benjamin Pinsent: 1776 – 1819
Mother: Esther Best: 1773 – 1868
James Pinsent: 1769 – 1833
Mary Pinsent: 1771 – xxxx
Dorothy Pinsent: xxxx – 1590
Benjamin Pinsent: 1776 – 1819
Elizabeth Pinsent: 1776 – xxxx
Samuel Benjamin Pinsent: 1794 – xxxx
William Pinsent: 1795 – xxxx
William Pinsent: 1799 – xxxx
Benjamin Pinsent: 1805 – xxxx
Benjamin Pinsent: 1808 – xxxx
William Pinsent: 1812 – 1893
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Leonard Albert Walter: 1916 – 1995 GRO0576 (Police Detective Sergeant, London, Middlesex)
1. Theressa Nazer Warren: 1915 – xxxx
Marriage: 1939: London, Middlesex
Children by Theressa Nazer Warren:
Daughter (GRO0476)
2. Enid Taylor: 1930 – 1997
Marriage: 1955: Westminster, Middlesex
Children by Enid Taylor:
Son (GRO0771)
Son (GRO0480)
Family Branch: Tiverton
PinsentID: GRO0576
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Leonard Albert Walter Pinsent was the second son of William George James Pinsent by his wife, Maud Eleanor Spall. His father was a “wholesale spice merchant” who founded and initially ran the firm of “W. G. Pinsent Ltd.” of 2 St. John’s Lane, Clerkenwell, in London. Leonard had two brothers, (William Thomas James and Ronald Bertram Horace Pinsent) and a younger sister (Joyce Elizabeth Rose Pinsent). They were brought up on Osidge Lane in Southgate (in north London).
Leonard joined the “Metropolitan Police Force” and was living in the Police Section House in Catherine Grove, Greenwich, in 1939 (London, England Electoral Registers: 1847-1965). However, he finished his training and was a qualified “Police Officer” living at Winchmore Hill in Enfield when he married Theresa Nazer Warren, the daughter of a “banker,” in December that year.
Leonard joined the Royal Air Force (#150308) in 1942 and was part of a contingent of young officers that sailed for New York from Gourlock in Scotland on the “U.S.A.T. Thomas H. Barry” that August (New York Passenger Lists: 1820-1957: Ancestry.com). On the completion of his training, he returned and he was a “Leading Aircraftsman” in April 1943. Where he was assigned, I am not sure; however, he was advanced to “Pilot Officer” (on probation) and to “Flight Officer” (on probation) in October that year. He became a “Flight Lieutenant” in April 1945 (London Gazette: 12th August 1943; and 1st May 1945).
Leonard Albert Walter Pinsent survived the war (unlike his younger brother Ronald Bertram Horace Pinsent who had similarly married and joined the Royal Air Force early in the war. Bertram had also been sent out to America for training; but died in a mid-air collision during a night-flight exercise over Florida and Georgia in July 1942. This occurred only a matter of weeks before Leonard sailed to the United States for his own flight training).
On returning to civilian life, Leonard re-joined the “Metropolitan Police Force” and started a family. He was living in Tintern Gardens in Wood Green (north London) when his daughter Janice Nazer Pinsent was born in 1948. The family moved to Broomfield Lane in Southgate in 1952 (London, England, Electoral Registers: Ancestry.com) but it was not there long before Leonard’s marriage to Theressa came to an end and the following year Leonard was back living with his father and stepmother (William George James Pinsent and Elizabeth, née Thornley, on Osidge Lane. From there, he moved in with his aunt Marguerite (née Pinsent) and her husband, George William Carey. They lived on Woodlands Road in Edmonton. He stayed with them until at least 1955.
Leonard and Theressa’s marriage was formally dissolved and both remarried in 1955. By then, Leonard was a “police sergeant” living at Trenchard House in Broadwick Street in Central London. He married a “hairdresser” named Enid Taylor. His ex-wife, Theresa, meanwhile, married Kenneth Ernest Wright, a “printer’s process engraver”. The latter may have emigrated to America as Theressa and her daughter Janice Pinsent are mentioned on the manifest of a “Pan American” flight to New York in April 1957. Janice was around ten years old (New York Passenger and Crew Lists: 1820-1957: Ancestry.com).
Leonard and Enid (née Taylor), settled on Bedford Road in Wanstead (London, England, Electoral Registers 1832-1965) and had two sons, one in the late 1950s and another in the early 1960s. They have both since married and had sons of their own – so Leonard’s family line seems secure.
Leonard became a “Detective Sergeant” and a noted Scotland Yard “finger-print expert”. His expertise was instrumental in solving numerous criminal cases. For example in 1952 he gave evidence in the trial of John Shannon and John Currie (“of no fixed abode”) who were accused of breaking and entering in Marlborough Hill, St. John’s Wood and stealing clothes and other property valued at £40. On that occasion, he was able to show that pieces of glass found at the scene of the crime had been marked by Currie’s right forefinger (Marylebone Mercury: Friday 29th February 1952).
Similarly it was, Leonard’s recognition of a thumbprint on a silver plate stolen by Sidney George Jones in 1955 that led him to not only confess but take the police on a tour of the houses in Wimbledon, Willesden and Highgate that he had broken into (Uxbridge & West Drayton Gazette: Friday 10th June 1955). Also, that year, he was able to match a thumb mark on part of a radiator stolen from a tank under repair at the “Royal Ordnance Corp” (R.E.M.E) camp at Bordon, near Portsmouth to a George Henry Preston. With others, he was charged with receiving and selling goods that he knew to be stolen. In a second but related case, Private Clive Brooks was charged with stealing radiators from Churchill and Sherman tanks under repair at the camp (Portsmouth Evening News: Tuesday 16th August 1955).
Leonard’s skills were also called upon in 1958 when David Hickman, an unemployed “slater and tiler,” was charged with break-in to the “Royal Navy Association” club in Gosport and stealing over £63, numerous bottles of whisky, rum, gin and sherry, cigarettes and a considerable amount of tobacco (Portsmouth Evening News: Wednesday 9th April 1958).
He was in demand at other times as well. On one occasion, in 1959, after the “Managing Director” of a firm disturbed three burglars attempting to open his safe the miscreant fled and the manager gave chase! Nevertheless, proof of identity was needed and it fell to Leonard to match the villains prints to the get-away-car (Saffron Walden Weekly News: Friday 3rd April 1959). In September 1962 Detective Inspector Leonard Pinsent’s skills were called upon to solve a different sort of mystery. The police needed to identify a sick Polish man who walked into Westminster Hospital and died there of rat-poison (Chelsea News and General Advertiser: Friday 7th & Friday 28th September 1962). Fortunately Scotland Yard has his finger-prints on file.
Leonard retired from the Police in around 1980 and moved to Brighton and Hove in Sussex. Leonard and Enid were living on St. Helen’s Crescent in Hove in 1981 (British Telephone Books: 1880-1894: Ancestry.com). Leonard died there in April 1995 and his estate (valued at £125,000) was probated in Brighton the following month (England and Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations: 1858 – 1995). Enid died in Hove two years later, in (London Gazette: 19th November 1997).
Grandfather: William John Pinsent: 1869 – 1918
Grandmother: Rose Emeline Parsons: 1872 – 1950
Father: William George James Pinsent: 1892 – 1963
Mother: Maud Eleanor Spall: 1892 – 1939
Sidney Henry Pinsent: 1895 – 1979
Henry Thomas Pinsent: 1896 – 1897
Leonard Charles Pinsent: 1898 – 1974
Rose Marguerita Pinsent: 1900 – 1918
Violet Pinsent: 1902 – xxxx
Bertram Horace Pinsent: 1904 – 1967
Ivy Lilian Pinsent: 1909 – xxxx
Marguerite Florence Ethel Pinsent: 1911 – 1911
Marguerite Winifred Pinsent: 1913 – 2006
William Thomas James Pinsent: 1914 – 1996
Ronald Bertram Horace Pinsent: 1921 – 1942
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Birth: 1839
Marriage: N/A
Spouse: N/A
Death: 1855
Family Branch: Tiverton
PinsentID: GRO1028
Grandfather: Benjamin Pinsent: 1776 – 1819
Grandmother: Esther Best: 1773 – 1868
Father: William Pinsent: 1812 – 1893
Mother: Mary Ann Bright: 1813 – 1887
Samuel Benjamin Pinsent: 1794 – xxxx
William Pinsent: 1795 – xxxx
Ann Pinsent: 1797 – xxxx
William Pinsent: 1799 – xxxx
Sarah Lucy Pinsent: 1800 – xxxx
Esther Pinsent: 1805 – xxxx
Benjamin Pinsent: 1805 – xxxx
Benjamin Pinsent: 1808 – xxxx
William Pinsent: 1812 – 1893
Emily Pinsent: 1815 – xxxx
Amelia Pinsent: 1818 – xxxx
William Pinsent: 1835 – 1835
William Pinsent: 1847 – 1871
Alfred Frederick Pinsent: 1851 – 1902
James Primrose Pinsent: 1857 – 1860
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William Thomas James Pinsent: 1914 – 1996 GRO0915 (Spice Merchant, London, Middlesex)
Ethel Mary Fearnley: 1916 – 2001
Married: 1938: Morden, Surrey
Children by Ethel Mary Fearnley:
William Joseph Pinsent: 1944 – 2017 (Married Wife GRO1468, 1968)
Son (GRO0755)
Family Branch: Tiverton
PinsentID: GRO0915
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William Thomas James was the eldest son of William George James Pinsent, a wholesale “spice merchant” who ran his business out of St. John’s Lane in Clerkenwell, which is near the centre of the City of London. He grew up in Stoke Newington in north London alongside two younger brothers (Leonard Albert Walter and Ronald Bertram Horace Pinsent) and one younger sister (Joyce Elizabeth Rose Pinsent).
William and Leonard played soccer for the Palmer’s Green Club in the mid 1930s. William was an effective forward who played for its First XI (Wood Green and Southgate Weekly Herald: 5th November 1937) and Lawrence Albert was a member of its, second, or reserve team (Wood Green and Southgate Weekly Herald: 15th March 1935). On one occasion, William’s Palmers Green team had a fixture with Sporting Club Hazebrouckoise, a visiting Flemish team. Sadly, they lost. 3 – 0 (Wood Green and Southgate Weekly Herald: 20th September 1935).
William Thomas married Ethel Mary Fearnley in Morden, in Surrey in 1938. She was an “electric cooking demonstrator” who was living on Carmelite Road in the City of London when the War-time Register was compiled, in 1939. Her husband was a “married commercial traveller” (A.F.S. B/13808) and the compilers caught up with him lodging in Finsbury. William Thomas had trained for the family business and he was designated a “spice merchant” when he joined the Royal Army Service Corps. He was promoted to corporal. William Thomas and Ethel Mary had two sons. The elder, William Joseph Pinsent, became a solicitor and the younger followed in his father and grandfather’s footsteps and joined the spice trade. They both married and had children. Their families are still living in the Home Counties (i.e. around London) today.
William Thomas and Ethel Mary were living on Brixton Hill in London in 1946 and on Winterfold Close in Putney in 1957 (London, England, Electoral Registers: 1947 – 1965). They spent a few years living on Toynbee Road (near Liverpool Street Station) and then left the City and moved to Ashtead, near Leatherhead, in Surrey, in 1973. William Thomas James Pinsent was a “retired spice merchant” when he died there in 1996. His widow, Ethel Mary Pinsent stayed on and died there in 2001.
William Thomas Pinsent formally incorporated his father’s spice business as a private company in 1950. It continued to operate out of St. John’s lane in Clerkenwell. In 1982, the Company sued “R. & R. Butchers’ Casings and Sundries Limited” in the High Court of Justice (Chancery) over a matter of debt (London Gazette: 9th September 1982). Perhaps as a result of this action and certainly after David Smith joined the firm it seems to have diversified into “Butchers’ Sundries”.
“W. G. Pinsent Ltd.” left London in around 1988 and it now (2019) operates as a small private company based in Rainham, near Romford in Essex. The firm may well have imported spices for a while after the war; however, since the retirement of William Thomas Pinsent, in 1996, it appears to have specialized in selling “butchers’ sundries” and “wholesale meat products” (www.companieshouse).
William Thomas James’ two sons both married. William Joseph Pinsent, the elder of the two, became a solicitor in Surrey. The line seems set to continue.
Grandfather: William John Pinsent: 1869 – 1918
Grandmother: Rose Emeline Parsons: 1872 – 1950
Father: William George James Pinsent: 1892 – 1963
Mother: Maud Eleanor Spall: 1892 – 1939
Sidney Henry Pinsent: 1895 – 1979
Henry Thomas Pinsent: 1896 – 1897
Leonard Charles Pinsent: 1898 – 1974
Rose Marguerita Pinsent: 1900 – 1918
Violet Pinsent: 1902 – xxxx
Bertram Horace Pinsent: 1904 – 1967
Ivy Lilian Pinsent: 1909 – xxxx
Marguerite Florence Ethel Pinsent: 1911 – 1911
Marguerite Winifred Pinsent: 1913 – 2006
Leonard Albert Walter Pinsent: 1916 – 1995
Ronald Bertram Horace Pinsent: 1921 – 1942
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