Introduction
Thomas Rendell spent much of his early adult life in the Somerset Light Infantry, serving overseas before, during and after the First World War. He later settled in Southampton, where he worked as a clerk for the Ministry of Labour. At the age of fifty-three, he married a woman thirty years his junior, and the couple had a daughter.
Childhood
Thomas was born on 23 January 1888 at Hardington Mandeville, the fourth of nine children of Edward Rendell and his second wife, Elizabeth (née Davis).[1] The family lived in a cottage in Rectory Lane. His father worked as a jobbing labourer, and by the age of thirteen Thomas was employed as a general labourer.
Military career
By 1911, Thomas had enlisted in the 2nd Battalion, Prince Albert’s (Somersetshire Light Infantry). The 1911 census recorded him as a lance corporal serving with the battalion in Malta. His younger brother Frank had also joined the regiment and was serving alongside him with the same rank. Thomas continued to serve with the regiment during the First World War, probably accompanying them to India. In January 1915, he was included in Hardington’s Roll of Honour.[2]
After the war, he remained in the army and, by 1921, was serving in India as a company quartermaster sergeant.
Inheritance
In the late 1920s, Thomas received a small inheritance following his mother’s death in July 1929. His father’s will directed that the family home be sold at that time, and the proceeds divided equally among his sons.[3] As his father’s estate was valued at £109 10s, and there were five sons, Thomas probably inherited no more than about £20.
Marriage and family life
By 1939, Thomas had left the army and was living in a boarding house at 43 Alma Road, Southampton, while working as a clerk for the Ministry of Labour. Two years later, he married Louisa Francis Christina Shard, who worked as an assistant in a florist shop. Thomas was fifty-three and Louisa twenty-three. They had one daughter, Sheila Margaret, born on 16 February 1942.[4]
Thomas died in the Southampton area in late 1971 or early 1972 at the age of eighty-four. Louisa survived him by more than thirty years, dying on 30 January 2003, aged eighty-four.
Conclusion
Thomas’s life took him far beyond the Somerset village where he grew up. His army service carried him to Malta and India, while his later years were spent in Southampton, where he married and embraced family life unusually late.
References
[1] Birth certificate; family reconstitution.
[2] Western Chronicle, 5 February 1915, p.6.
[3] Will of Edward Rendell, dated 7 March 1921, proved at Taunton on 23 March 1927.
[4] Civil registration death index (Sheila Margaret Drake, Southampton, July 2000).
