Charles Cowens HUNT (1853–1876)
St Paul section: Row 26, Grave E4½ [St Paul ref D22]
IN REMEMBRANCE
OF
CHARLES COWENS HUNT
DIED DECEMBER 1ST 1876
AGED 22 YEARS
Charles Cowens Hunt was born at Westbourne Terrace, Chichester Street, Kensington on 29 September 1853 and baptised at St Mary’s Church, Bryanston Square on 26 October. He was the eldest son of George Rudolph Hunt (born in Portland Place, London on 27 September 1825) and Eliza Walker Cowens (born at Bryanston Square, London on 12 May 1826), who were married in the Marylebone district near the end of 1852.
Charles is hard to find in 1861: he would then have been seven years old and may have been at boarding school. His father George Hunt (35), described as a tea & spice merchant, was then living at 8 Chichester Street, Paddington with his wife Eliza (34) and their other children Louisa Mary (6), Helen or Ellen Jane (5), Walter George (3), and Sidney Percy (four months). Also in the house were an assistant, two lodgers, and two servants.
Two years later in 1863 Charles’s father George Hunt went bankrupt.
Charles’s mother, Eliza Walker Hunt, died in the East Preston registration district (probably at Worthing) at the age of 45 near the beginning of 1871. At the time of the 1871 census his father (45), a widower, was the manager of the Royal Sea House Hotel in Worthing, and with him were his daughters Louisa Mary (16) and Helen Jane (14). Once again Charles Cowens Hunt is hard to find.
In 1872 at Marylebone, Charles’s father George Rudolph Hunt married his second wife Harriet Augur.
On 17 January 1873 Charles’s sister Louisa Mary Gascoigne Hunt (18) died of congestion of the lungs, and her death was announced in Berrow’s Worcester Journal. The family was described as being “late of Worthing and Malvern”.
Charles died after falling ill in Oxford in 1875:
† Charles Cowens Hunt died at Walton Street at the age of 22 on 1 December 1875 and was buried at St Sepulchre’s Cemetery on 6 December (burial recorded in the parish register of St Paul’s Church).
His death was announced thus in the Standard: “HUNT.—1st, at Oxford, after 48 hours’ severe illness, Charles Cowens, the eldest and much-respected son of George Rudolph Hunt.”
Subsequent life of Charles’s father, George Rudolph Hunt
At the time of the 1881 census George Rudolph Hunt and his second wife Harriet were respectively the Secretary and Housekeeper at the Star & Garter Hotel in Richmond, and they had two young children: Rudolph (5) and Ethel Frances (3). Also living with them were three of George’s children from his first marriage: namely Ellen Jane (24), a hotel assistant; Walter George (22), a law stationer; and Sidney Percy (20), a clerk of a hotel;
George Rudolph Hunt and his second wife Harriet appear to have got divorced just a year later in 1882.
In 1887, when he appeared as a witness at the Old Bailey, George Rudolph Hunt was the proprietor of the Junior Garrick Club.
In 1891 George (65) described himself as a widower and was living on his own means, boarding at 132 Stockwell Park Road, Clerkenwell.
His son by his second marriage, Sidney Percy Hunt, died on 4 February 1893, when he was manager of the Park Hotel in Cardiff. His obituary in the Western Mail reveals that Sidney was educated at Malvern and in France before working as deputy manager under his father at the Star & Garter. His effects came to £1,942, and his executor was his widow, Ada Jane Hunt.
In 1901 George Rudolph Hunt (75), described as a widower and a retired club & hotel proprietor, was one of the pensioners of the Sutton’s Hospital almshouse in Charterhouse. He died in the Holborn district in 1903.
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