London – Waltham Forest (Borough of) – Chingford Mount Cemetery (War Grave of Thomas Seabrook)

One of the war grave areas at Chingford Mount Cemetery.

I’d better start these posts by saying I haven’t selected stories from war heroes that have legendary status for whatever reason, but the other route of taking photos of graves and looking for what information I can find about the lives of the less noted. Everyone is unique and the sacrifice of their lives were all equally enormous, with a surprisingly limited amount of records about many of the war dead.

This is the war grave of Thomas Seabrook, the son of William John Seabrook (born in Shoreditch in 1845) and Lavinia Jane Seabrook (born in Colchester in 1849). Thomas was born in Bethnal Green, London in 1881 and at the time of the 1901 census he was living with his parents and younger sister Sophia at 3 Gossett Street in Bethnal Green, being listed as working as a wood carver. Thomas had a number of older siblings though, as at the 1881 census when they lived in the same property, there was a 9-year old Lavinia, a 7-year old William, a 5-year old Elizabeth and a 2-year old Matthew.

Thomas was a private in the 13th Battalion of the Bedfordshire Regiment, service number 34775, although I don’t know why he was in that regiment. Thomas died on 17 November 1920 at the age of 40, but there’s nothing I can find in the media about how he died. It looks like the troops from the regiment had all returned by the previous year at the latest, so I assume it was some sort of accident that took place in the UK. But, I’d like to know more…..