People on board

BALL, Thomas George

Thomas George Ball was born in 1875 in Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent to Thomas Ball and Sarah Ann Brammer. Both Thomas and his father were Colliers and Sarah’s father was a Potter, the two major employments of this area of Staffordshire. By the time of the 1881 census Thomas had changed to being a ‘Potters Ovenman’ and later to a ‘Pottery Slip Maker’. Thomas George was the eldest of twelve children, eleven of whom were alive in 1911.
Thomas George Ball married Edith Ellen Slinn in February 1899 and they had two children, a son Ernest in 1900 and a daughter, Edith Ellen in 1910. In both the 1901 and 1911 censuses Thomas gave his occupation as ‘Sanitary Ware Presser’. They lived in Market Street and then Mostyn Street in Hanley.

Thomas appears to have enlisted in 1918 in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent in the Yorkshire Hussars Yeomanry. He was in the 2/1st brigade which was posted to Ireland in April 1918. Presumably returning on leave he travelled on RMS Leinster on the 10th of October. He did not survive the sinking but his body was recovered and he was buried in Grangegorman Military Cemetery in Dublin.