Harry Baynham (1903-1940)
Harry was born at Walsall in 1903.
He died at Walsall in 1940.
Harry was born on 3rd April 1903, most likely at 26 Oxford Street, Pleck in Walsall where his parents Arthur William and Elizabeth were recorded as living in 1901.
There were four older siblings living at home – Lillie (15), Tom (13), Marshall (‘William‘) (5) and Dora (3).
His oldest brother Arthur (22) is living a few doors away at 14 Oxford Street with his wife Ann who is expecting their first child (Arthur Edward William).
In 1905, when he was 2 years old, Harry’s father Arthur William died of tuberculosis and in the following year so did his sister Nellie, aged just 23. It is probably around this time that his mother Elizabeth moves the family to 151 Price Street, Pleck.
When he was 6 years old he had ‘hip troubles’ (according to the 1911 census).
And then just after Christmas 1910 his sister Lillie was admitted to the lunatic asylum at Burntwood and a month later his brother Tom died suddenly at 21, of intestinal problems (his death was the subject of an inquest).
He appears on the 1911 census for 151 Prince Street, aged 7, as the youngest member of the household – he is living with his widowed mother Elizabeth and older siblings William (13) and Dora (11) and a boarder Thomas Reeves (61).
Lillie is shown (as Louisa) on the census, but was still in the lunatic asylum at Burntwood – she was not formally discharged from there until May 1911.
William and Thomas Reeves are both shown to be working and Dora is at school, but Harry does not appear to be at school and this may be connected with his hip troubles earlier.
There is no more information available for Harry until 1939, when the Register shows him living with two other single men at 39-40 Goodall Street, Walsall with Eveline L. Wood, a 65-year old widow who is recorded as the Proprietress of a ‘Cafe and Boarding Establishment’. Harry is described as a ‘Leather Worker (Fancy) Preparer’.
Harry died of tuberculosis at Pelsall Sanatorium on 1st October 1940, aged 37; Pelsall Hall in Paradise Lane, Pelsall was a sanatorium in Walsall for sufferers of tuberculosis. The informant was his older sister Dora Walker.
Death notices in the local newspaper on 5th October included thanks to “the Doctor, Matron and Staff of Pelsall for kind attention”.