Henry Passand (1756–1848)
Henry Passand was born on 13 September 1756, outside Oxfordshire, and may be the Henry Passand, son of Henry & Jane Passand, who was baptised at Kingsbury in Warwickshire on 9 October 1756.
In about 1780 he started work at 48 High Street in the parish of St Peter-in-the-East as assistant to the apothecary Joseph Maysey (or Maisey), and when the latter died in 1785 he helped Maysey's widow continue to run the business, taking it over in 1789. On 25 April that year he was matriculated by the University of Oxford as an “Apothecary”, a necessary procedure for anyone who was not a freeman to run a business in the city. He was listed as an Oxford “Druggist” in the Universal Business Directory for 1794/5.
Passand was described of being of St Peter-in-the-East parish in Oxford when on 17 April 1800 at Hinton Waldrist he married Elizabeth Salisbury. Their only child Henry John Passand was born on 18 August 1801 and baptised at St Peter-in-the-East church on 31 December that year.
Passand was also an “Accoucheur”, and when he took on his own junior partner William Rusher in about 1815 they described themselves as apothecaries and midwives. This partnership was dissolved on 22 May 1821.
Passand paid the council a rent of 2s. 2d. on a property in St Peter-in-the-East parish in 1818 and again in 1835.
Passand retired in May 1821 at the age of 65, and his junior partner William Rusher took over his home and business at 48 High Street and underwent the necessary matriculation as an “Apothecarius et parturientibus opem ferrens” (apothecary and midwife) the following month. Jackson’s Oxford Journal reported the change of business owner thus on 26 May 1821:
It appears that the Passands moved in with their bachelor son Henry John Passand, who was now Rector of Didcot: Jackson’s Oxford Journal of 19 April 1828 reports thus on the death of Passand’s wife at the age of 62:
On Thursday last died, at the Rectory House, Didcot, Berks, the residence of her son, the Rev. H. J. Passand, Elizabeth, the wife of Henry Passand, formerly an eminent apothecary of this city.
Elizabeth was buried at her family home of Hinton Waldrist.
Passand was living with his son at Shipton-on-Cherwell Rectory at the time of the 1841 census.
Passand died on 20 July 1848 at the age of 92 and was buried with his wife at Hinton Waldrist a week later.
The “Will of Henry Passand” (date of probate 9 August 1848) was deposited at the Prerogative Court of Canterbury: ref PROB 11/2079.
Passand’s only son
Henry John Passand (1801–1867) was educated at Eton and matriculated at the University of Oxford from The Queen’s College on 15 March 1820. He obtained his BA at St Alban Hall in 1824.
He was Rector of Didcot in 1828, and became Rector of Shipton-on-Cherwell in 1831. The 1841 census shows him as a bachelor approaching 40 living in Shipton with his elderly father Henry Passand and Charlotte Salisbury (probably a maternal relation), and three servants.
In 1845 Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford, described Henry John Passand thus in his Diocese Book:
Shipton on Cherwell. Small parish. Passand not clerical ... wants gravity & sense. Companies with lower class of farmers &c. Sporting, yet overpowered with weight of his office ... seems shy ... quere is he mad or drinks
On 14 December 1848 at Shipton-on-Cherwell Henry John Passand married Catherine Turner, , who was born there.
At the time of the 1851 census Henry John Passand (49) was living at Shipton Rectory with Catherine (35), three servants, and a groom.
He moved to 44 Brunswick Road, Brighton, where he died on 16 October 1867.