He is believed to have been educated at Dulwich School. He went out to India to work with the British India Steam Navigation Company and their associated agents Anderson Green around 1900. He is known to have worked initially in Calcutta with Sir William Currie, later chairman of the P&O Group, in Colombo during the First World War and then as Manager at Tuticorin in SE India in the 1920’s.

They returned to England in 1930 and lived in a succession of houses. in St Albans in the 1930’s. before moving to the Red House in Wheathampstead, Hertfordshire, in approx 1942, together with Dorothy’s brother and sister.

On Dorothy (Dot)’s death after a long illness dominated by Parkinson’s disease in August 1960, Charles moved to Southend where he lived with and/or close to Laurence Frank Steel, his nephew by marriage, until his death on 14 December 1965.

He spent his long retirement doing physics and sound/music research among other things.