Thomas Goldfinch

West Street
Lower Street
Worthington Lane, Dover
St. Margaret’s at Cliffe
Last Lane, Dover

Occupation: Wheelwright, Carpenter, Victualler & Furniture Seller

Thomas Goldfinch was born and baptised in Sandwich in 1785. Ten years later in February 1795, he is committed to seven days in Dorchester Prison for being a “Rogue and a Vagabond.” Though aged only ten he tells the magistrate that he is twelve. What he was doing in Dorchester we just don’t know.

In 1799 Thomas is back in Kent and was apprenticed to carpenter Thomas Harrison in Mongeham where he learns his trade.

By 1809 he has finished his apprenticeship and has found employment in Deal where he met and married Ann Newing and they set up home together in West Street where their three children were all born. Their first child they named Ann Newing, after her mother. There is an error on her baptism record where her father’s name has been incorrectly written as ‘James’!

Ann Newing, the mother, died in West Street and in 1814 and the following year Thomas married Lucy Darby and moved into Lower Street. We believe this to be number four as successive carpenters and wheelwrights also ran businesses from this address it, therefore, must have had the space that a Wheelwright in particular required.

Kentish Weekly Post or Canterbury Journal – Friday 03 October 1823

In 1823 Thomas suffered the theft of his tools which is reported in the newspapers. Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to find what happened to the thief, Henry Johnson Smith. This is the last recorded mention we can find for Thomas in Deal but by 1841 we know he has moved into Dover where he remains until his death in 1861.

Goldfinch Sons

Thomas Barber Goldfinch moved to Calais where his children were all born. With his second wife, he emigrated to New South Wales, Australia, arriving on 4 November 1848. In the 1850s he took on several Public Houses in Sydney though he seems to go back to his original occupation of a Pork Butcher by the 1860s. He died in the Picton area of New South Wales in 1898.

George Lynch Goldfinch follows his brother to Australia arriving on 13 April 1849. He may have stayed with his brother when he first arrived as he gives his brother as the ‘relation in the colony’ on arrival. He didn’t stay long in Australia as in December 1850 he married Mary Futter in New Zealand. In the ‘Wise’s New Zealand Post Office Directory’, he is listed as a Wheelwright. He died there in 1904.

Sources and further reading:
New South Wales, Australia, Assisted Immigrant Passenger Lists – Ancestry
Dorchester Prison Admission and Discharge Register – Ancestry
Newspaper image © The British Library Board. All rights reserved.
With thanks to The British Newspaper Archive (www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk)