[Phoenix]

But why wasn't Walter's birth registered?

I did already have the answer.

There was the following entry:

Births Jun 1856 (>99%)
HUTCHINGS Walter Hamlin Portsea 2b 391

Walter was born 1 April 1856 (not 1854)
His father was Daniel Hutchings, a Bombardier in the Royal Artillery - though Daniel is only described as a gunner, when he is next caught sight of, in Woolwich in 1861.
His mother was Sarah Hutchings [sic] formerly Hawkins.
He was born in the house of his Hawkins grandparents.

So Walter was illegitimate, his mother being deserted by her young man. She died of consumption when he was a toddler, and aunts and an uncle died while he was still a boy. By the time he was 15, he was on the Hercules at Spithead, and I wonder whether the Navy proved more of a family than his blood relations?

He married a woman who, in her turn, had split up with her husband, and remarried very shortly after Walter's death. I wish I could feel he had a decent life - but it's hard to find much happiness in the scraps I have pieced together.