People on board

ELKINS, Thomas Samuel

Thomas Samuel Elkins was born in 1881 in Poplar, London to Thomas Alfred Elkins and Eliza Long. He was the second of their eleven children, nine of whom were alive in 1911. Thomas Snr was a Cab Driver and the family moved within London from Hackney to Islington to Lewisham. In the 1901 census Thomas and his older brother Alfred gave their occupation as ‘Printer Compositor’ while their younger brother Charles was an apprentice Gold Chain Maker.

In 1904 Thomas Samuel Elkins married Mabel Duncan Cuff in Edmonton, Middlesex. They had three children, Reginald Thomas 1906, Vera Mabel 1909 and Eileen Rosa in 1915. Continuing to work as a Printer Compositor, Thomas and his family were living in Knighton Park Road, Sydenham in 1911 and had moved to Wiverton Road by 1918.

He enlisted in the Middlesex Hussars (1st County of London Yeomanry) and in October 1918 he was with the 2/1st Brigade. It had moved to Ireland in May of that year and was stationed in the Curragh. Presumably returning home on leave he travelled on RMS Leinster on the 10th of October along with seven others from the brigade. None of the eight survived the sinking but Thomas Elkins’ body was recovered and he was buried in Grangegorman Military Cemetery. His name is recorded on the Online London War Memorial.