Thomas Edward Dodman
The soldier:
Thomas Edward Dodman enlisted in to the army in London, whilst residing at an address in Manor Park, Essex.
He was assigned to the King’s Royal Rifle Corps and given regimental number 10783.
Thomas served his country professionally and courageously. He was promoted to Sergeant and received the ‘Military Medal’ for bravery in battle.
He was ‘killed in action’ on the 10th March 1917, at the age of 28, whilst serving in the King’s Royal Rifle Corps, 1st Battalion.
His name is inscribed on Pier and Face 13A and 13B of the Thiepval Memorial, Somme France and on both Snettisham’s memorials and its ‘Roll of Honour’.
The man:
Thomas Edward Dodman was born in Snettisham on the 6th November 1888. His parents were William Samuel and Lavina (nee Wilkinson) Dodman. His birth being registered at Docking.
He had 3 older siblings; William (born 21st August 1882), Emma (born 21st August 1885) and Susan (born 21st October 1886).
His younger sister Alice Dodman was born in Snettisham on the 17th October 1890.
By the 1891 the entire family and Thomas’s grandfather, John (a widower, aged 71) were living at an address in Snettisham. William’s occupation was listed as a ‘Chimney Sweep’ as was that of his father John.
In March 1893, Thomas’s mother Lavina died, aged 37. He was just 4 years old.
William, Thomas’s father re-married, wedding Jane Mickleburgh in Snettisham on the 16th May 1896.
The couple went on to have several further children, younger siblings to Thomas;
Charles Henry (born 3rd February 1897), Eliza Maud ‘Evelyn’ (born 6th February 1901), John Victor (born 24th November 1902), Robert Frederick (born 28th November 1904), Dorothy Grace (born 26th September 1908) and Rose Mary (born 1910).
By the 1901 census, Thomas’s family comprising of his father, stepmother and 7 children were living in Snettisham. William, Thomas’s father, was still the local ‘chimney sweep’.
Thomas was now 12. He, like all his siblings attended Snettisham school (still existing as the village’s primary school). He started there on the 2oth June 1895 and left on the 28th November 1902 to go to work.
In 1905, tragedy struck the family when Eliza Maud ‘Evelyn’ died at the age of 4.
By the 1911 census Thomas’s family were still in Snettisham, but he had moved out and at 22 was living at 35 Park Street, London (Hanover Square). Here he was employed as a ‘footman’, along with a number of other staff, by a wealthy foreign merchant banker, Baron Brum Shrider.
Thomas’s father, William died in early 1915, aged 57.
In early 1917, Thomas married Florence Scoffield, the marriage being registered in Grantham, Lincolnshire. Tragically, his army record shows that his personal effects and medals were to be forwarded to his young wife following his death a matter of weeks later. There are no records of children from this too brief marriage.
Thomas’s sister Dorothy also died in the spring of 1917, aged 9, having succumbed to diptheria.
All of Thomas’s other siblings survived the war and lived to a good age.
Picture: Thomas’s brother Charles Henry, who died aged 73 and was buried in Snettisham in 1970. Charles had wed Mary Bingham and their only son, born in Snettisham in 1917 was given the name ‘Thomas E’ after Thomas. With thanks to BruPeckett, Ancestry.com
