Henry Baynham ('Harry') (1903-1940)
Harry was born at Walsall in 1903.
He died at Walsall in 1940.
Harry was born on 3rd April 1903 at 26 Oxford Street, Pleck in Walsall.
The 1901 census had recorded his parents Arthur William and Elizabeth living there with four of their children – Lillie (15), Tom (13), Marshall (‘William‘) (5) and Dora (3).
The eldest child, Arthur (22) was living a few doors away at 14 Oxford Street with his wife Ann.
In 1905, when Harry was 2 years old, his father Arthur William died of tuberculosis and in the following year so did his sister Nellie, aged just 23.
It was probably around this time that his mother Elizabeth moved the family to 151 Price Street, Pleck.
When Harry was 6 years old he had ‘hip troubles’ (according to the next census).
In 1910 his sister Lillie contracted tuberculosis and spent a couple of months in a convalescent home and at the end of that year was admitted to the lunatic asylum at Burntwood; a month later his brother Tom died suddenly at 21, of intestinal problems.
He appears on the 1911 census for 151 Prince Street, aged 7, as the youngest member of the household – he was living with his widowed mother Elizabeth and older siblings William (13) and Dora (11) and a boarder Thomas Reeves (61).
Lillie appeared (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 were working. Dora was at school, but not Harry (possibly due to his hip troubles earlier).
He also appears in the 1921 Census for 151 Prince Street, so presumably he had lived there throughout the war with Lillie and Dora (and their mother Elizabeth until her death in late 1915); presumably William had stayed there too, when on recuperation leave from The Front (he was wounded twice).
In 1921 Harry (18) was working as a Fancy Leather Worker with Messrs. Winsor & Plant in Glebe Street, Walsall.
There is no more information available for Harry until 1939, when the Register showed 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 was working as a Leather Worker (Fancy) Preparer.
Harry died of tuberculosis at Pelsall Sanatorium (formerly Pelsall Hall) in Paradise Lane, Pelsall on 1st October 1940, aged 37; 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’.
Acknowledgements:
- Census extracts – Ancestry (www.ancestry.co.uk)
- Birth & Death Certificates – General Register Office (www.gro.gov.uk)
- Photograph – family’s own