Norman, Henry John
9 June 1834 – 4 June 1905
Banker

Henry John Norman was the son of Henry Norman and Georgina Stone.  After his mother’s death when he was 8 years old his father married Arabella Beadon.  In 1868 Henry John was registered as living in Bromley Common when he was recorded on the Hayes list of voters as eligible to vote in the West Kent elections. He was a banker, a partner first in Bouverie’s and then in Jones, Lloyd & Co. Later he was made a Director of the London & Westminster Bank.
He married Anne Hewitt Coote and by the time he purchased land in Hayes on which to build a house he had three sons. His uncle George Warde Norman sold him fourteen acres of land in Hayes for £2811 in 1873. He had an imposing house built in a semi-Gothic style which he regarded as his country home, a place to enjoy away from his main residence in London and to which he regularly came.  Known as Gadsden it was occupied from 1875.
The census reports for 1881 and up to his death were all recorded at his London address.  In 1881 he was in Hanover Square where his staff included a head nurse and two nurse maids. to look after his growing family.  A daughter and four more sons had been born since the land was bought. Twenty years later the family had grown up but he still retained a large household staff. In 1901 at Cadogan Square he employed a butler, footman, 3 housemaids, a cook, kitchen and scullery maids.
He seemed to have looked after his staff well.  When Mary Dalrymple Geddes, the head nurse, died at the age of 76 in 1928 the family erected a gravestone in Hayes Churchyard to ‘nurse and beloved friend of the family of the late Henry John Norman at Gadsden, Hayes Kent … as a token of gratitude and affection’.
She was buried close to the graves of Henry (1905) and his wife Anne (1926) and their son Alfred (1907).  Recorded on the gravestone of Henry’s second son Reginald, who died in 1919, are memorials to his eldest son Major Harold Henry Norman, Ist Battalion Northamptonshire Regiment killed near Ypres on 11 November 1914 and to Captain Lionel MC killed in the battle of the Somme 15 Sept 1916.