Pte 52470 Thomas Lawless

 

Their four sons would all serve in the war, and three would be killed. 

Mr Roger Lawless, 18 Russell Street, Heywood, has been notified that his son Private Thomas Lawless, Lancashire Fusiliers, was killed on April 1st. Mr Lawless has now had two sons killed and one reported missing during the war, and a fourth son is with the artillery in the firing line.

In 1891 his parents, with three sons, are living at 7 Miller Street, Heywood.  His father is a plasterer, Thomas is 2.

 

By 1901 his parents have moved to Middleton, and are living at 2 Hall Street, with five of his siblings.  Thomas, 13, is under detention at St. David’s Reformatory School for Roman Catholic Boys in Mold, Flintshire, North Wales.  

 

Tom was not the only family member to get into trouble.  Both his parents had been up before the magistrate on a number of occasions.  In January 1911 his brother Martin was sentenced to two years’ detention for theft (of 28 shirts) and the census finds him at a Borstal institution in Kent.

In 1911 his mother Mary, 46, married, is head of the household, at 24 Walton Street, Heywood.  Jim is 24, a plasterer, Tom, 22, Nelly, 18, and Joseph, 16 work in a cotton mill, Norah is 13, and Doris 4.  His father Roger, 51, is working as a plasterer in Barnsley, Yorkshire, living in a lodging house.

 

All four brothers volunteered in 1914 or 1915. Jim joined the Royal Artillery;  Martin joined the King’s Own Rifles (and later served in the Lancashire Fusiliers); and Tom and Joseph joined the Lancashire Fusiliers.  

 

He enlisted in Bury  on 12th August 1914 as Pte. 3141 Lancashire Fusiliers, giving his occupation as cotton operative. He is 5’ 7 and a half inches tall, weighing 116 lbs, has grey eyes and dark hair, with tattoos on both forearms. He gives his parents, Roger and Mary, at 24 Walton Street, as his next of kin.  He was discharged on 19th February 1915 as “not likely to become an efficient soldier” (a medical report states chronic nephritis).  Unfortunately his enlistment with the King’s Regiment has not survived, but the amount of the War Gratuity suggests that he served for 16 months, enlisting in late 1915.

He is recorded as serving with the Lancashire Fusiliers as Private 23391 and was subsequently transferred to the 18th Battalion of The King's Liverpool Regiment as Private 52470. Thomas was killed in action on the 01st April 1917. 

The Battalion War Diary for 31st March shows the battalion in trenches lately vacated by the enemy at Madeleine Work in front of Neuville Vitasse, digging trenches at night 3-400 yards nearer Neuville Vitasse, 3 posts on each side of the Mercatel- Neuville Vitasse road. The diary records three named O.R. wounded.

The diary records casualties for 1st April 1917:  2 O.R. Killed, 8 Wounded.

Tom was one of those killed in action on 01st April 1917.  He was buried close to where he fell, close to L/Sgt Thomas Albert Woollam, and the grave marked with a cross. After the war, when graves were concentrated, their bodies were removed and reinterred in London Cemetery, Neuville Vitasse, just southeast of Arras, where they now rest.  

Neuville-Vitasse was attacked by the 56th (London) Division on 7 April 1917 and captured by the same Division on 9 April. The village was almost entirely lost at the end of March 1918 but regained at the end of the following August. It was later "adopted" by the Metropolitan Borough of Paddington. The London Cemetery was made by the 56th Division in April 1917 and greatly extended after the Armistice when graves were brought in from other burial grounds and from the battlefields between Arras, Vis-en-Artois and Croisilles. London Cemetery contains 747 burials and commemorations of the First World War. 318 of the burials are unidentified and on a screen wall are panels bearing the names of casualties buried in the following four cemeteries, whose graves were destroyed by shell fire:- WANCOURT ROAD CEMETERY No.2, just East of NEUVILLE-VITASSE; NEUVILLE0-VITASSE MILL CEMETERY, close to a German strong point on the road to Mercatel; BEAURAINS ROAD CEMETERY No.2, just North-West of NEUVILLE-VITASSE; BEAURAINS GERMAN CEMETERY; and ERCHIN GERMAN CEMETERY (Nord). The cemetery was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens.

His youngest brother Joseph served with the Lancashire Fusiliers signalling section and suffered a gunshot wound to the abdomen at Gallipoli. He reached hospital in Egypt, where he died of his wounds on 17th August 1915. He now rests in Alexandria (Chatby) Military and War Memorial Cemetery, Egypt. He was 20 years old.

 

His brother Martin served under the alias John Wilson in the Lancashire Fusiliers.  He was reported Missing and eventually declared Killed in Action on the first day of the Somme, 1st July 1916.  He had no known grave and is commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme.  He was 26.

 

Tom’s death was announced in the Heywood Advertiser on 20th April 1917:
 

 

 

 

His family placed a notice in the Heywood Advertiser on 20th April 1917:

“In loving memory of Private Thomas Lawless, 18 Russell Street, Heywood, who was killed in action in France April 1st, 1917, aged 29 years.  Rest in Peace.  Never forgotten by his Father, Mother, Sisters and Brother in France; also Aunt Kate and Cousin Cissie.”

 

After Thomas’ death, having lost three sons, his mother requested that Jim be sent home. The Army agreed, and he returned to the U.K. on compassionate grounds in June 1917. He served for the rest of the war in the U.K. and was demobbed in March 1920, after serving over five years.

 

His parents, living at 18 Russell Street, Heywood, received Thomas’ Army effects, including a War Gratuity of £7.

 

His mother died in 1923 and his father in 1939 aged 78.  The only surviving brother, Jim, married, had a family (including a son Thomas) and lived until 1963.

 

The three brothers are commemorated  on the following Memorials:
 

St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church, Heywood 

The Heywood Memorial, Greater Manchester.