henry childs

Subject :             Henry Childs   (b ca 1800 – d 1884)

Researcher :      Christine Clarke

Shere sawyer/carpenter raises family despite wife’s early death

Henry Childs was a carpenter and sawyer in Shere throughout his working life.  His wife’s early death left him with three small children to care for, but they stayed together as a family before infirmity in his later years forced Henry into the Guildford Union Workhouse.

According to Census records, Henry Childs was born at the turn of the nineteenth century in Shere.  No confirmed baptism or other record has been traced to indicate his exact year of birth, so nothing is known about his ancestry and early life.

Henry married local girl Hannah Knight at Shere’s St James’ Church in May 1821 ¹.  The marriage had the ‘consent of parents’, although none were named.  Hannah was certainly pregnant if not already a mother, as their daughter Mary was baptised at St James’ four months after the wedding. Henry was noted as a carpenter ².

The couple went on to have two more children, James in 1823 and George three years later ^{3, 4}.  Hannah may well have suffered complications during George’s birth, as just a few days after his baptism in February 1826, she passed away, almost certainly only in her mid-20s, and was buried at St James’ ⁵.

This left Henry with three children aged under 5 to care for while trying to earn a living as a carpenter.  There are no records to show how he coped with this desperate situation, although there were several Childs families close by to help out ⁶.

Henry and his children stay close

15 years later, the 1841 Census showed all four of them were still together living in Pislake (now Peaslake), Shere ⁷. 

40-year-old Henry was a ‘sawyer’, a job which involved working in a saw pit where timber was cut into planks, mostly for use in the construction industry.  No occupations were noted for Mary, James and George but it is likely 20-year-old Mary would have been taking care of domestic arrangements.

Ten years later, Henry was living alone, described on the Census as a 53-year-old widowed carpenter living in Pislake Hill, Shere ⁸.  His unmarried sons James (a carpenter) and George (a maltster) were both nearby, lodging in Sutton Abinger, and Shere respectively ^{9, 10}.  Henry’s daughter Mary was working as a house servant in Wimbledon ¹¹.

In December 1856, Henry’s son James married spinster Mary Childs in Shere ¹².  Their marriage certificate makes for somewhat alarming reading – both James and Mary had the same surname, both were from Shere, both had a carpenter father named Henry Childs. However, 20-year-old Mary’s family were indeed separate, her parents Eliza and Henry living in Shere with Mary’s younger siblings ^{13, 14}.  

James and Mary settled in Pislake and by 1861, Henry was lodging with them, as was Henry’s younger son George ¹⁵.  Henry’s daughter Mary had married widower Charles Mandeville in 1860 in Islington, and was living in Ockford Road, Godalming where her husband was ‘turnpike toll collector’ ^{16, 17}.

Henry’s health declines

Henry was now in his 60s, and as the decade wore on, his health began to fail.  From about 1866 he received some ‘poor relief’ help from the Guildford Union for ‘illness’ and a ‘bad foot’ but by the end of 1870 and through 1871, Henry was ‘infirm’, spending over 200 days in a one-year period in the Guildford Union Workhouse/Infirmary ¹⁸.

However, Henry was not in the Workhouse at the time of the April 1871 Census, but living at Medlands Farm, Coombe Bottom, Shere ¹⁹.  He was a ‘journeyman carpenter’, meaning that he was employed on a day-by-day basis, although whether 72-year-old Henry’s health was up to working seems doubtful.  His son George, a 46-year-old shepherd, his wife Ellen, and their four young children, were living with Henry.

Having been noted as ‘infirm’ since early 1870, it would seem unlikely that Henry would have been able to remain at the farm for long.  George and Ellen were having their own troubles – they had lost their one-year-old daughter Elizabeth in 1870, needing poor relief to help pay for the funeral, so having to care for and accommodate Henry would probably eventually have been too much, especially as Ellen gave birth to eleven children between 1862 and 1884 ^{20, 21, 22}.

There are no available records to show how much time Henry spent in the Guildford Union Workhouse between 1871 and 1881, but he was an inmate at the time of the 1881 Census, recorded as an 80-year-old widowed carpenter born in Shere ²³.  

He passed away there on 22^nd December 1884, aged 84, from ‘decay of age’ with his funeral at Shere’s St James’ Church two days later ^{24, 25}.

February 2021, updated October 2025
Edited by Mike Brock

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Sources and References

Original Surrey parish and Guildford Union accounts (only available for 1864-1871) are available at the Surrey History Centre, Woking. Digitised parish records were sourced through Ancestry.co.uk.  A complete list of references is here: Henry Childs Reference

 Spike Lives is a Heritage project that chronicles the lives of inmates, staff and the Board of Guardians of the Guildford Union Workhouse at the time of the 1881 Census.  The Spike Heritage Museum in Guildford offers guided tours which present a unique opportunity to discover what life was like in the Casual/Vagrant ward of a Workhouse. More information can be found here