Author: Finch, William Stafford
Biography:
FINCH, William Stafford (1808-83: findmypast.com)
He was baptised on 25 Sept. 1808 in Shoreditch, London, the son of Elisabeth and William Finch. (Some records give his birthplace as Westminster, which is not necessarily an inconsistency.) His contribution of poems to the Scraps of Poesy (1835) of William King (q.v.) is an anomaly among his publications, which otherwise have to do with church affairs and church history. He was a latecomer to academic life, matriculating at St. Edmund Hall, Oxford, in 1843 (BA 1847, MA 1850), but he became a clergyman and served from 1861 to 1881 as Vicar of the new church of St. Peter in the new development of De Beauvoir Town, Hackney, London. He married, probably about 1840, and had at least one son who survived his father and took over his position at St. Peter's after he retired, but also at least one other son who died young. His wife Mary Anne was still alive, aged 65, at the time of the 1881 Census--at which point they lived at Gloucester Villa on the Hounslow Road--but she predeceased him. He died on 29 Oct. 1883 and was buried in Camden on 30 Oct. A manuscript collection of 187 of his poems from 1826 to 1870, mostly occasional, is held in the archives of Yale University Library. (findmypast.com 3 Aug. 2021; ancestry.com 3 Aug. 2021; Alumni Oxonienses; WorldCat; Rev. J. C. Egan, extract from funeral sermon, Church of England Pulpit and Ecclesiastical Review 17 [1884] 135) HJ