People on board

TOLLADAY, Thomas

Thomas Tolladay was born in Walworth, London on the 6th of October 1891 to Thomas Tolladay and Elizabeth (Betsy) Raby. He was the eldest of their eight children, six of whom were alive in 1911. The family lived in Beddome Street in Newington where Thomas Snr’s occupation varied between a Carman and a Coal Porter. Thomas Jnr. married Nancy Blowers on Christmas Day 1910, both giving their ages as twenty-one. However, in the following year’s census Thomas was nineteen and Nancy twenty-one. 

The young couple were living in Holyoak Road in Newington Butts when the census was taken and Thomas gave his occupation as ‘Plate Man – Club’. They had three children, Rose in 1911 who died the following year, Thomas in late 1912 and Charles in October 1916 but who died in April 1918.

It is not known when Thomas Tolladay enlisted in the Lancashire Hussars Yeomanry which he did at Battersea. In October 1918 he was a Corporal in the 2/1st Regiment, a second-line training and draft reserve which had moved to Ireland in May of that year. Whether he was returning home on leave or being drafted, he travelled on RMS Leinster on the 10th. He did not survive the sinking nor was his body recovered. His name is recorded on the Hollybrook Memorial in Southampton.

His widow Nancy remarried in 1919 to William Webb and had another son George. They were recorded in the 1939 Register living in Thurlow Street along with her son Thomas Tolladay and his wife and daughter.