William Henry Finch (1874-1949).
My 2nd great-uncle.
William Henry Finch was the son of Isaac Finch and Phoebe Ann Ward, born in 1874 in Reigate, Surrey. He was baptised on 12 July that year at St Mary’s parish church.
He grew up in the town with his siblings and by the 1891 census was working as a gardener/domestic servant. On 16 October 1898 he married Elizabeth Martha Yates at St Mary’s in Reigate. She’d been born in Chelsea, Middlesex, on 29 October 1870 to french polisher George Charles William Yates and his wife Elizabeth.
In 1901 William and his family were living at 4 Glovers Road, Reigate, along with his mother Phoebe Ann, and by now he was working as a carpenter’s labourer. Ten years later they were at 48 Allingham Road, Reigate, and he was billed as an under-gardener. Changing again, he was listed as a carpenter in the 1921 census. By the time of the 1939 Register he was still working as a carpenter and had moved to a house called Roselea in Slipshatch Road, Reigate.
Elizabeth died on 2 December 1940 at East Surrey Hospital – her funeral at the parish church was reported in the Surrey Mirror on 13 December. William died after a short illness at home on 23 December 1949 according to the Surrey Mirror of 6 January 1950. His funeral was held at Reigate Parish Church with internment at Redstone Cemetery in Redhill.
William left effects worth £134 14s 9d.
The couple had four children:
- William George Finch (1899-1971) lived in Reigate for most of his life and married Bertha Holder in the town in 1928. They were living with his parents in Slipshatch Road at the time of the 1939 Register, when he was listed as a builder’s labourer and she as a charwoman or cleaner. He died in Reigate in 1971.
- Dorothy Louise Finch (1901-87) married Julien Louis Brems in 1948 having previously worked as a shop assistant (noted in the 1939 Register). He ran the family radio manufacturing and repair business and was a refugee from Belgium, born in Liège in 1898. The family escaped from the Germans in 1914 during the First World War (Surrey Mirror 16 April 1948). Dorothy and Julien lived in Redhill. He died in 1967, Dorothy in Redhill Hospital in 1987.
- Arthur Thomas Finch (1907-1992). He was living in Reigate at the time of the 1939 Register, working as a bricklayer and married to Edith (although I’ve found no record of their marriage). They lived in Earlswood in Surrey and later Heathfield in Sussex. Edith died in 1978. Arthur died in Eastbourne Hospital, Sussex, in 1992 after a short illness (Surrey Mirror 6 February 1992) and was survived by two daughters.
- Lena Elizabeth Finch (1910-2002). In 1944 she married Harry / Henry Frederick Michael Cannon, who served in the King’s Royal Rifle Corps in the Second World War. They had a large family and the Surrey Mirror of 10 October 1969 reported on his exhibition of paintings of local pubs. He died in 1980, Lena in 2002.
Sources: Ancestry.com and Findmypast.com for census and BMD records, British Newspaper Archive (titles in text), Surrey Family History Centre. England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1858-1966.