Pte 142187 Thomas William Pearson

• Age: 23
• From: Carlisle
• Regiment: MGC (30 BN)
• Died on Tuesday 7th May 1918
• Commemorated at: Tyne Cot Memorial
  Panel Ref: P154-159 &163A

Thomas William Pearson was born in  Carlisle in the summer of 1895, and baptised in St. Mary’s, Carlisle on 8^th September 1895. His parents Robert Pearson and Jane Crone had married in Carlisle in 1890. They were both born in Cumberland, his father in Carlisle, and his mother in Holme.

Thomas was the third of five surviving children. He had older brothers John and Ernest, and younger siblings Annie and Robert. Another sister, Henrietta (Ettie) died young. All the children were born in Carlisle.

In 1901 the family is living at 6 Dalton’s Court, Carlisle. His father is a general Labourer. There are five children in the home. Thomas is 6.       

By  1911 the family had moved to Liverpool, and his father, siblings Annie and Robert, and Thomas are at 17 Warburton Street. His father is a forwarding clerk in a furniture warehouse. Thomas is 15, an errand boy for a newsagents.  Also in the household are a married cousin, L? Gillespie and her three children. His mother is not in the household.

Thomas enlisted in Liverpool and served as Private 27516 in the 18th Battalion of The King's Liverpool Regiment before he transferred as Private 142187 to the  30^th Bn Machine Gun Corps.

He was reported wounded in the Liverpool Post on 25^th September 1916, it is highly likely that it is after treatment for hiswounds that he was posted to the Machine Gun Corps. He was killed in action on 7th May, 1918 aged 23.  Hs body was not recovered and his name is recorded on the Tyne Cot Memorial in Belgium.

Those United Kingdom and New Zealand servicemen who died after August 16th 1917 are named on the Tyne Cot Memorial, a site which marks the furthest point reached by Commonwealth forces in Belgium until nearly the end of the war.

The Tyne Cot Memorial now bears the names of almost 35,000 officers and men whose graves are not known. The memorial, designed by Sir Herbert Baker with sculpture by Joseph Armitage and F.V. Blundstone, was unveiled by Sir Gilbert Dyett on 20 June 1927.

The memorial forms the north-eastern boundary of Tyne Cot Cemetery, which was established around a captured German blockhouse or pill-box used as an advanced dressing station.

His effects went to his father Robert of 17 Warburton Street, Hall Lane, Liverpool, and 10-5-6d was ‘reserved for Eleanor Gillespie, nearest blood relations pending receipt of an applic from them’.

CWGC record his age as 24 but he was only 23. 

We currently have no further information on Thomas William Pearson, If you have or know someone who may be able to add to the history of this soldier, please contact us.