[citation needed] No biographies or obituaries make any reference to Bennet Woodcroft’s personal life and children conceived prior to his marriage.

His son Henry Woodcroft Hammond (1839-1893) also became an engineer and emigrated to San Francisco, where he became President of the Anglo-Pacific Steel Company.

His daughter Eleanor Woodcroft Hammond (1844-1918) married a Frenchman, Joseph Pierre Emmanuel Theogene Cluzel (1835-1885) and moved to France, where her descendants survive to this day.

When the South Kensington Museum was being planned in the mid-1850s, the Patent Office, through Woodcroft, was invited to assemble a collection of industrial devices for display.

1862 was a particularly fruitful year, when due to his efforts, his museum secured Puffing Billy the world's oldest surviving steam railway locomotive (1814), Stephenson's Rocket (1829), which set the design standard for locomotives, and the engine of Henry Bell's Comet (1812), the first steamship to be operated commercially in Europe.

[8] A letter to his subordinate at South Kensington typifies his single-minded approach: "Get the Comet engine in all its filth" he commanded, emphasising the urgency of the quest.