Dorothy Bennett and her Ancestors

George Henry Bennett (1861 to 1941)

George Henry Bennett was the father of Dorothy Bennett, the wife of Sidney Alfred Parsons.

George was born on the 6th of November, 1861, in Chilworth which is near Southampton in Hampshire. He was an illegitimate child, the son of Frances (Fanny) Bennett who had been working as a servant at Woodley Lodge, near Romsey, four miles north-west of Chilworth, when the child was conceived.


Chilworth is marked with a red C on the map. A description of Chilworth from a Southampton Village Directory dated 1881 follows —

“CHILWORTH — A village and parish in the southern division of the county, 5 miles from Southampton, 3 S.W.from Chandler's Ford railway station, 4 S.E. from Romsey, and 81 from London, in the Hundred of Mainsbridge, Union of South Stoneham, Petty Sessional Division and County Court District of Southampton, Rural Deanery of Romsey, and Archdeaconry and Diocese of Winchester. The church is small, but a well-built edifice in the Gothic style, having a nave, transept, tower, and slate spire (octagonal), and two bells, erected at the sole expense of Peter Serle, Esq. Date of rgister, 1721. The living is a vicarage, held by the Rev. Ninian Hosier Barr, B.A., of St.Catherine's College, Cambridge, who resides at Nursling. There is no school: Baddesley is the nearest. The manor house is the residence of Mrs. Fleming. Parish Clerk, John Holloway. Letters arrive through Romsey, which is the nearest money order, telegraph office, and post town. Wall Letter Box, near the Clump Inn, cleared at 10.30 a.m. on Sundays; Week Days, 5.30 p.m.
Population, 1881, 227.”


When George was conceived his mother, Fanny, was living in Romsey in the employment of Henry Arlett who, in the 1861 census, gave his occupation as “fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge”. Henry was a 51 year old bachelor living with his older sister who was also unmarried and Fanny was their cook. Fanny did not name the child’s father on the birth certificate.

Fanny’s father Henry Bennett died four months before her baby was born and she went back to live in Chilworth with her recently widowed mother Elizabeth Bennett whose home was not far from the Clump Inn. (The Clump Inn closed in 2005 but later re-opened with a new name — and is now the Chilworth Arms).

Young George and his mother Fanny continued to live with her mother Elizabeth and, when Fanny married, her husband, Thomas Peckham, lived there for a while as well. They had children — daughters Ellen and Frances, and sons Thomas, Arthur, William and James, all of whom were given the surname Peckham. But George kept the name Bennett, his mother’s maiden name.

George became a fireman (which probably meant that he worked on the railways) and, when he was nearly twenty four years old, he got married. His bride was Rose Smith, a girl who had been born in New Alresford in Hampshire but whose parents had later moved to Winchester. The wedding ceremony was held at St. Bartholomew’s Church in Hyde, Winchester on the 6th of April 1884. The wedding was formally witnessed by the bride’s father and Ellen Bennett, a relative of George’s.

At first George and Rose lived in Chilworth and George worked as a gardener and groom. Their first child, Rose Dorothy, was born there. But soon afterwards they moved to the Isle-of-Wight where George became a coachman at Apse Manor, near Shanklin. While living there they had two more daughters, Ada and Gladys. George’s wife Rose’s grandfather Charles Light had for a while kept an inn near Osborne House on the Isle of Wight.

In September 1889 George’s mother placed an advertisement in the Hampshire Advertiser which read — “Wanted, Situation as Coachman. Ride and drive well; single or pair. Good character. H.B., Mrs. Peckham's, Castle-lane, Chilworth, Romsey”. Soon afterwards George and his family moved back to the mainland. They lived in North Baddesley, a village adjacent to Chilworth, at number 7 Baddesley Common, and George worked as a groom and coachman.

In February 1891 the Hampshire Advertiser reported a court case against a fraudster called Charles Wood alias Captain McDonnell. George Bennett was one of his victims. Charles Wood had convinced George that he could offer him a job as manager of the Fountain Hotel in the High Street, Southampton, and met him there to discuss the matter. He later wrote to George confirming the offer and requesting £5 deposit for the accommodation which went with the job, which George duly paid. There was, of course, no job, and Charles disappeared. Charles Wood had committed many similar offences but eventually the police managed to arrest him and he was sent for trial at the Assizes.

Within a couple of years of moving back to the mainland, George and Rose had moved again. First to Bassett in Southampton which is not far from North Baddesley, and after a few years to Shirley which is also part of Southampton. Their remaining children were born in Southampton — George, Edward, Thomas, Elsie and Reginald.

In 1923 Rose and George’s daughter Dorothy’s family was hit by a series of tragedies. First Dorothy herself died of pneumonia leaving her husband Sidney Parsons and their six children. Then a year later Sidney died leaving the children as orphans. And four months after that, when Sidney’s father John Parsons died as well, Rose was with him and registered his death. George and Rose looked after the three orphaned girls and the two eldest boys who were soon able to fend for themselves. Their recently deceased grandfather John had made provision in his will for the children and the two youngest boys were placed with paid foster parents.


George and Rose gave this picture of themselves to their granddaughter Evelyn Parsons some time in the 1930s.

In later life George and Rose moved to North Baddesley, near to Chilworth where they had started their married lives, and once again George worked as a groom and gardener. Rose died there of heart disease on the 11th of January 1939 at their home in Castle Lane.

After Rose died George moved to Timsbury, north of Romsey, where he lived with his sister-in-law, E.L. Smith. He died there of pneumonia and papilloma of the bladder on the 10th of May 1941. His sister-in-law reported the death and gave the address as ‘Fair View’, Timsbury.


Children of George and Rose Bennett


George and Rose had four daughters and three sons. They were :

•  Rose Dorothy, born 1886 in Chilworth. Dorothy, as she was known, married Sidney Parsons, the son of a Southampton publican. She emigrated with him to Queensland in 1908. The family returned to live in Southampton again in 1920, but three years later she died, and a year after that, Sidney died, leaving their children as orphans.

•  Ada Mabel, born 1887 near Shanklin on the Isle of Wight. Mabel’s parents moved back to the mainland when she was about three years old and she grew up in Chilworth and Southampton. In 1909, when she was about 18, she became pregnant and married George Brown a professional cricketer who was lodging with them. They had four children: Stella, Lynda, George and Peggy. After marrying, she used her second name, Mabel, rather than Ada. They lived in the Shirley district of Southampton but George was often away from home and her younger sister Elsie lived with her for a while. George played for Hampshire and England and became famous. During the English winters, he sometimes played and coached for the Wanderers’ Club in Johannesburg, South Africa. After retiring as a player he became an umpire and in 1935 he was the first umpire to give a first-class cricketer “out” under the new experimental leg-before-wicket rule. Read more about George Brown by following the link. George died in Winchester in 1964 and Mabel died there in September 1982.

•  Gladys, born 1889 while her parents were living on the Isle of Wight. Nothing more is known of her.

•  George Ernest, born 1893 in Southampton. When he was 18 years old he was living with his parents and worked as a grocer’s assistant. After that, nothing more is known of him.

•  Edward Thomas, born 1897 in Southampton. In 1920 he married May Bellenie in Southampton.

•  Elsie, born about 1898 in Southampton. Elsie lived with her parents in Southampton until she was about fourteen years old when she went to stay with her older sister, Mabel, whose husband, a professional cricketer, was often away from home. When she was 22 years old Elsie married Ronald Tredinnick, a clerk who lived in Southampton.

•  Reginald Bruce, born about 1903 in Southampton. In 1927 Reginald married Elsie Irene O'Connell. He became a Fellow of the Zoological Society and wrote and illustrated books on aviary birds and pets. The last book he published was in 1961; it was entitled “Budgerigars, Canaries and Foreign Finches”. He died in the spring of 1961 at his house at Chiphall near Wickham in Hampshire.

Ancestors of George Bennett


Parents
Father — unknown
Mother — Frances Bennett

Grandparents
Grandfather — Henry Bennett
Grandmother — Elizabeth Bennett née Misselbrook

Great-gandparents
Great-grandfather — Henry Bennett
Great-grandmother — Fanny Bennett née Butcher

Great-grandfather — Thomas Misselbrook
Great-grandmother — Elizabeth Ireland



Return to Dorothy Bennett’s Ancestors



You are free to make use of the information in these web pages in any way that you wish but please be aware that the author, Mike Parsons, is unable to accept respsonsibility for any errors or omissions.

Mike can be contacted at parsonspublic@gmail.com

The information in these web pages comes from a number of sources including: Hampshire County Records Office, Somerset Heritage Centre; Dorset County Records Office; Southampton City Archives; the General Register Office; several on-line newspaper archives; several on-line transcriptions of Parish Register Entries; and several on-line indexes of births, marriages and deaths. The research has also been guided at times by the published work of others, both on-line and in the form of printed books, and by information from personal correspondence with other researchers, for all of which thanks are given. However, all of the information in these web pages has been independently verified by the author from original sources, facimile copies, or, in the case of a few parish register entries, transcriptions published by on-line genealogy sites. The author is aware that some other researchers have in some cases drawn different conclusions and have published information which is at variance from that shown in these web pages.