Thomas Salmon
Rank: Private
Service Number: 200686
Date of Birth: 1876
Regiment: 1st Bn Suffolk Regt
Date of Death: 22 July 1920
Age at death: 44
Cemetery / Memorial: Hadleigh Cemetery
Country: UK
Grave / Reference:
Relatives: Son of William and Harriet Salmon, husband of Bessie Ermine Salmon.
Address: The White Horse, Stone Street
Private Thomas Salmon was born in Edwardstone in 1876, married Bessie Ermine Baker of Onehouse in 1898 and moved to Stone Street, Hadleigh in 1900. In the 1901 census he described himself as an Assurance Agent. In 1911, he was still in Stone Street working as a general labourer. It is likely that he enlisted under the Lord Derby scheme and was mobilised in mid 1916. One year later he was serving with the 1st Suffolks in Salonika, from where he wrote home in July 1917 telling that ‘the climate is a trying one and a man wants a strong constitution to be able to stick it’ and that one day he found ‘a snake curled up in his mosquito netting.’ In June 1918 he was in hospital suffering from malarial fever, he appeared to recover and was discharged from the army in April 1919. He died the next year aged 44 at home in Stone Street. The cause of death being recorded as malaria. His son Victor Kenneth also served in the Great War and when his wife Bessie died in 1960, she was buried with Thomas at Hadleigh Cemetery.
1911 Census.
The photo above shows Private Willie Rolfe c.1902 and was taken at T Atkinson's studio in Harold's Cross, Dublin while Willie was serving in Ireland with the Suffolk Militia.