Charlie seems to have lost his hearing as a young man. He attended school in England and then worked for a time in the family business in Madeira. With the decline of the wine trade after the disease of the vines, there did not seem to be a future for him there so he was sent to Australia where family friends had promised to help him get started. He took some wine to sell to provide capital and did purchase land and plant vines but these did not do well and he eventually became almost destitute and worked as a labourer on a sheep farm. He returned to England in 1862 and joined his uncles in their business in Rood Lane, London. In 1869 (19 Aug) he married Sarah Agnes Neale who bore him a daughter Margaret, but Sarah died in 1876. In the 1870s he was living at the Carmo, Funchal and must have hoped to revive the family business but seems to have returned to England as he married Katherine Wilkinson in London in 1877 (1 Nov.) In old age he suffered senile dementia and was cared for by a couple in Withernsea, Yorkshire where he died aged 75.

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