User:Chiswick Chap/Benjamin Charles Thomas Gray



Benjamin Charles Thomas Gray (born 7 June 1858 in Waterloo, Liverpool, England; died 27 August 1930 in Tamworth, New South Wales, Australia) was an English accountant.

Wealthy origins
Gray's grandfather (also named Benjamin Charles Thomas Gray) was a wealthy London merchant. He had insured 14 Upper Stamford Street, London as a merchant on 4 October 1831 and 18 Mabledon Place, Burton Crescent on 24 November 1835, as well as 1 Newmans Court, Cornhill. According to the London Metropolitan Archives, "Benjamin Charles Thomas Gray appears to have started in business in London as a West Indies merchant in about 1832. By 1846 he was already also acting as a North America merchant, and had taken his son Charles William Gray into partnership. The firm was known at this time as B.C.T. Gray and Son. By 1856 another son, Benjamin Gerrish Gray, was also a partner, and the firm was styled B.C.T. Gray and Sons ... The firm traded successively from Upper Stamford Street; Great Surrey Street, Cornhill; Lime Street and Great St Helen's." The Gray family "firm dealt in a wide variety of goods and cargoes. The records contain references to, inter alia: beef, pork, cocoa, flour, sugar, limes, molasses, rice and timber." On 16 September 1824, Gray (the elder) bought a slave, a man named Will for £52; and on 22 February 1825 he bought a woman named Mary for £16.

First marriage
Gray married Florence Georgiana Spooner Carr at St Jude's Church, Grays Inn Road, London on 28 September 1878. Carr was the second daughter of wealthy solicitor Robert Perry Carr (1827-1908) and Charlotte Ives (1831-1924). R.P. Carr was a self-made man: like his wife, he came from rural Norfolk in the east of England, but his father's name is not recorded; he was adopted by a local farmer, George Spooner, who owned 18 acres at Briston, Norfolk. Spooner was not rich: he left effects under £200, but he brought Carr up well enough for Carr's daughter to be named after him, with the uncommon middle names "Georgiana Spooner"; well enough, too, for Carr to become a solicitor's articled clerk, and from there to become a successful lawyer in Eastbourne, Sussex, running his own firm, R.P. Carr & Co. Florence was young and rich. Gray was young, rich, and unfaithful. The family firm sent him out to the 'Far East' to work as a book-keeper. He held lands in New Plymouth (New Zealand). Gray had five daughters by his wife Florence: Violet was born in 1880 in Shanghai, China; Marjorie was born in 1882 in Hong Kong; Beatrice was born in 1884 in Japan; Freda  was born in 1886 in Singapore; Nina was born in 1893 in Singapore. In 1891, Violet, Marjorie and Freda were all attending Ladies School at St Margaret's Convent, East Grinstead, Sussex.

Business in Singapore, China, and Japan
Gray developed a taste for the exotic; a studio portrait shows Florence in full Japanese traditional dress, with kimono and parasol, in Yokohama, about 1885. A less formal photograph shows Gray in oriental robes, seated on the floor of the Hotel Shimpanlo, Shimonseki with three Japanese men wearing western business suits; the picture also shows signs of a life of pleasure, with binoculars for watching horse-races, and champagne.

Marriage in Singapore
With Annie Gertrude Millington, Gray had at least nine more children: Lionel (1897); Sadie (1898); Debonaire (1900); Evelyn (1903, Singapore); Reginald (1904); Doreen (1909); Felicia (1910); Portia (1913); and Flavia (1916). Actually, one more daughter, Patricia, was born earlier, while Gray was still married to Florence Carr: 24 September 1894, in Singapore; but the mother's name on the parish register is 'Alice Millington'. It is unclear whether this is a clerical error for Annie Millington, or whether the mother was a relative of Annie's.

Separation
Florence returned to England without Gray, and they never saw each other again. Both her parents and Gray's helped to care for her and her five children; for example, Violet was staying with the Grays in Kensington on the night of the 1901 census.

The tradition among Gray's family in Australia is said to be that Gray was given a large sum of money by his father-in-law, Robert Perry Carr, to leave England, on condition that he never returned. Gray stayed in Singapore (then a British colony), Annie bearing four more of his children there (Doreen was born in Singapore in 1908), before he finally emigrated in 1910 with Annie and their children to Tamworth, New South Wales (where Felicia was born on 9 December 1910). The out-of-wedlock daughter Patricia remains unknown in Australia.

In Australia
Gray worked for different accounting firms in Tamworth, including Thos. Davis, Sheedy and Co., and Messrs. Brierly and Brierly. As well, he was "manager and bookkeeper of the Model Butchering Company for five or six years."

In December 1910, Gray and A. J. Ruth, both of the Church of England Men's Society, visited the Tamworth prison; the prisoners are said to have

"listened with appreciation and enjoyment to a most interesting illustrated address on the 'Far East' by Mr. Gray, who took the audience through China and Japan, with an explanation, geographically and socially, of the countries and people."

In January 1926, in his retirement, Gray published a musical play, ''Cromwell. A Tragedy—With an Incidental Musical March : 'King Charles'.'' In February 1928, he published a book of poetry, Australia, An Epic with Other Poems and Adaptations. Gray died at his home in Janison Street, Tamworth, on 27 August 1930. His obituary noted simply that he "had travelled extensively".