The England Outbound Passenger database begins in 1890.

If he was born in 1872, it is quite possible he emigrated with others, possible his family. So, there may not be a record of him. Some manifests show the head and x number of children. Based on his age, he may never have process through immigration, or he obtained Citizenship from his parents. While current political controversy surrounds illegal immigrants... MOST Americans can find an illegal immigrant (resident alien with no immigration status) in their family tree.

The Castle Garden arrivals (preceded Ellis Island) shows a Charles Hobbs arrival 25 March 1884, but was 48 years of age...unless it was mistranscribed.

I used the Ellis Island one step search and found no candidate likely to have been him.

There are a number of ship manifest images available online. But, you must go through them page by page for each ship, each transmigration. Since he was found in New York and New Jersey, it is highly likely he did not traverse from England to Canada, arriving at some eastern Canada Ports through Quebec. Most mid-west bound did go through Canada to Quebec and taking trains, etc. down into the US. A large amount of Scandinavians just this method, as did German Mennonites escaping from Russia.
One set listing is the Immigrant Ships Transcribers Guides (ISTG)
http://www.immigrantships.net/
New York:
http://immigrantships.net/nycarrivals1_6.html
--Some of the manifests have been transcribed, some are still in the image formats. I have found image formats that have a lot of pages...unreadible.