JONES Thomas Henry Herbert
Thomas Henry Herbert JONES
Private 024781, 110 Company, Royal Army Ordinance Corps
Died of heart disease, aged 39 on 23rd January 1917 at BASE HOSPITAL, just 3 weeks after being at the front.
Buried at JANVAL CEMETERY, Dieppe, France. (I. E. 5.)
Husband of Edith, née MORRIS, 2, Windsor Place, Mumbles. Married in Sep 1899, (the daughter of the well known Mumbles butcher William MORRIS).
Father of two young children, Trevor, b. 1903 and Phyllis Margaret, b. 1908 and were just recovering from the death of their firstborn Thomas Brinley who died aged 14 in 1914.
Thomas was the third of five (surviving) children of the late Thomas (and Rachael JONES) Brewer and Maltster, who owned/leased several public houses in Swansea and who owned the High Street Brewery in Tower Lane. In 1889 he sold the brewery to Hancocks of Cardiff. A few years later he moved to Mumbles to run the Railway Inn (changed its name to the Rhondda in 1899). He died in November 1900, having already retired and handed over the licence to one of his sons in law. The pub passed out of the family’s hands when his mother Rachel died in 1903.
Thomas junior was a butcher, (Like his father in law) and took over licence of the Rhondda for about a year after his father died. (he is there for the census) and 1902. Then he was an auctioneer's clerk and subsequently described as a clerk.
When war broke out he had his family and business to consider, so did not rush to volunteer.
In 1916 conscription was introduced and even married men were being called up. His turn came in Nov 1917 when he left for the war.
It appears he died of heart disease, just 3 weeks after being at the front.
Thomas was their only son, born on 16 June 1878 and baptised (aged 9) with one older and two younger sisters on 9 November 1887 at Holy Trinity church, Swansea.
In 1881 census Thomas is living at 33 Dyfatty Street and In the 1891 census he is living at 1 Trinity Place, Swansea.
In May 1902 Thomas is living at Sea Beach Cottage (which I think was at the bottom of Western Lane, where the Rugby Club is now) and on the birth of his second son there in 1903 he is described as a retired licensed victualler.
By the autumn of 1904 Thomas is living at 3 Walters Crescent and remains there until around the summer of 1908. His daughter Phyllis is born there in March 1908 and he is described as an auctioneer’s clerk on her birth certificate, although it is Edith who registers the birth.
In October 1909 it is Edith’s name that is in the rate book for 3 Water’s Crescent, not Thomas’s and he disappears (at least I cannot find him) until his death in January 1917.
Edith moves to 3 Victoria Avenue in 1911 and remains there until 1916.
On the CWGC death notice for Thomas it gives an address of 2 Windsor Place for Edith, but I cannot find her there. When her daughter Phyllis is admitted to Oystermouth School in September 1916 it is from Highfield, Newton and from Bynmill school. But I cannot find her admitted to Brynmill school. So, there is an error somewhere. Phyllis leaves Oystermouth School in July 1918 (aged 10) as the family are ’leaving the area’.
There is no rate book for 1918, unfortunately, so Edith ‘disappears’ as well until I pick her up in the 1939 Registration along with Phyllis. Her surviving son, Trevor, is married and living in London by this time.
The CWGC record that Thomas died of heart disease on 23 January 1917.
I cannot find a Thomas Henry Herbert Jones going to Australia, but that’s not to say he didn’t emigrate. The Mumbles Press article above mentions a need for a change of scene, although it seems to think he returned from Australia around 1914 and then lived in Walter’s Crescent. Was he admitted to a hospital at any time?
Research: Kate Jones.