William Finch-Crisp

Born in Hackney in 1840, he later lived in Erith, Kent, before settling in Great Yarmouth at the end of 1854. A note in Chronological Retrospect of the History of Yarmouth and Neighbourhood says he married Mary Ann, daughter of Robert Boyce Crisp, on June 25, 1870.

His best-known work is Chronological Retrospect of the History of Yarmouth and Neighbourhood, a long-running local history that covers events from A.D. 46 to 1884 and was issued in an extended third edition in 1884. The same volume also presents him as the author of practical books including Printer’s Business Guide, Printer’s Book of Reference, Punctuation Simplified, and Handbook to Angling.

That mix of subjects gives a good sense of his career: part local historian, part compiler, and part working man of print. He appears to have published from Alma Place in Great Yarmouth, and his writing has survived mainly through reprints and digital library editions rather than through a large modern biographical record.