Thomas Finch (1795-1852) and Sarah Chisley (1803-1848).
My 3rd great grand-uncle and aunt.
Baptised at St Mary’s Church in Reigate, Surrey, on 4 April 1795, Thomas was the oldest son of Thomas Finch and his wife Ann Burley.
Young Thomas married Sarah Chisley by license in Reigate on 27 July 1820. She was from the Liberty of Kingswood in Surrey, born on 9 January 1803 and baptised at St Peter’s in Walton-on-the-Hill in Surrey on 27 July. As she was a minor at the time of her marriage, she needed the formal consent of her labourer father Thomas before the ceremony could take place. They had a number of children, baptised in various parishes locally, including Gatton and Reigate, suggesting that Thomas was moving around regularly for work.
The 1841 census showed them living in Colley Cottage, Reigate, with Thomas working as an agricultural labourer. Sarah died relatively young in January 1848 and was buried in Reigate on the 16th of the month.
The 1851 census revealed a marked downturn in widower Thomas’s fortunes as he was living at the Reigate Union Workhouse, listed as a farm labourer. Three other Finches were also residents of the Earlswood Common institution – Ann, Emma and Jane – and their ages match those of his daughters. Why he opted to go into the workhouse with them isn’t known but it would’ve been because he was too ill or too poor to support himself because of a lack of work locally. Peter Higginbotham’s exhaustive website on workhouses explains what he and his children would’ve faced on admission and how distressing the experience must’ve been.
On top of the in-built procedural horrors of the workhouse, there may have been much wrong with the Reigate institution judging by a report drawn up by the Assistant Poor Law Commissioner at the time the Finches were in residence in 1851. The commissioner attended a Board of Guardians meeting that discussed charges that the Master was quietly depriving adult residents of their rightful amount of bread, that the Matron neglected to make visits to the Infirmary and “had not sufficiently attended to the regular supply of clean clothing”. The pair were also said to exhibit overbearing conduct and violent tempers. It was suggested that they be called on to resign. Although it’s not clear from the surviving papers what the result of all this was, the inspector stated in his report: “There is no suspicion or imputation of fraud on the part of the Master, who is in many respects an excellent officer. The infirmity of the paupers is chiefly attributable to the Matron.”
The inspector also gave a potential reason for why Thomas had to resort to the workhouse: “There is generally full employment for rural labourers at this time at good wages from 10/s to 12/s per week. But there are not withstanding an unusual number of the more able chaps in the workhouse – almost all however single men of loose character. This has arisen in great measure from the abolition of the practice which prevailed in all previous winters of giving able men out relief on the condition of coming to the workhouse to perform an allotted task of work…” So was Thomas a ‘loose character’ or the victim of a change in benefits?
He did not live long after his experience in the institution, which could mean that he was in the workhouse for health reasons. He died around the new year of 1853 and was buried at St Mary’s in Reigate on 5 January 1853.
Sarah and Thomas’s children were:
- Henry Finch (1821-????) was born when his parents were living in the Liberty of Kingswood in Surrey, where his mother came from. He’s shown on the 1841 census, when the family were living in Reigate. I have not traced him beyond this. He may have emigrated – a Henry Finch, born in England to father Thomas around 1820 – died in Michigan in 1902.
- Thomas Finch (1823-1823) was baptised at Gatton in Surrey and died in December of the same year, when the burial record showed the couple were living in Ewell, Surrey.
- Eliza Finch (1828-1917) married twice and was widowed twice – her husbands died young. She had children with both George Kemp and George Sanders and lived with several unmarried daughters for many years in Reigate and Croydon, Surrey. She died in 1917 in Croydon.
- William Finch (1831-1925) was baptised in Reigate and spent many years working as a platelayer on the railways. He married Harriet Weller, raised a family and lived in and around his home town for the rest of his life. She died in 1909.
- John Finch (1833-????) was working as an agricultural labourer at the time of the 1851 census. There are plenty of John Finches living in the area at this time and therefore difficult to decipher what happened to him.
- Ann Finch (1836-????) was born in Reigate and married bricklayer George Thornton of Croydon, Surrey, in 1858. They appeared together in the census records for a few decades but then George was on his own, listed as married, from 1891. I’ve not traced Ann.
- Emma Finch (1838-1876). Emma married labourer John Sherlock but died young, leaving a young family.
- Jane Finch (1842-1919) was born in Reigate and married labourer James Miles. Initially they lived in and around Reigate but later moved to Camberwell with their family. James died in 1911.
Sources: All data has been gathered from Ancestry.com, FindMyPast.com, the British Newspaper Archive and visits to Surrey Family History Centre in Woking. Workhouse report: The National Archives (Catalogue ref: MH 12/12577).