William Hadwen Wheelwright

William Hadwen Wheelwright was born on 18 April 1836 at Hanley Road, Hornsey, North London. His father was John Hadwen Wheelwright, a minor artist. His mother was Sarah Catherine née Hank, eldest daughter of William Hank of Newington Green, Middlesex.

His mother must have died when William was still in child, for in 1847 his father, now a widower, married Mary Stanfield, eldest daughter of Clarkson Standfield, RA. She too died young, aged only 33, on 16 May 1854 at Auteuil near Paris.

William’s father died on 21 October 1874 at ‘Sousbois,’ a house at Spa in Belgium, leaving an estate valued at £405. Probate was granted to William’s elder brother John Joseph Hanley Wheelwright.

William appears on no British censuses before the one taken in 1901, at which time he was living at ‘Underwood,’ his residence at Binfield in Berkshire. The similarity to the name of the house in Belgium where his father had died some 27 years earlier is unlikely to be a coincidence. The household included two servants: an elderly gardener and a housekeeper.

In 1911 William was still living in the same place. The household now included three servants, though the third was only an ‘apprentice gardener.’

William Hadwen Wheelwright died, aged 75, on 30 September 1912 at St Andrew’s Hospital, Northampton. He left an estate valued at £1447. He had never married.

Photographed by Ghémar Frères of Brussels.