Shaw, Thomas Robson

Thomas was a fourteen-year-old scholar when he was living with his parents, David Shaw and Mary Annie Shaw in 7 Percy Terrace, Bellingham in 1911. He was born in Newport, Monmouthshire on 16 September 1896. His father and mother were both teachers and moved around the country, presumably seeking promotion – his father subsequently became a headteacher in Bellingham. In 1901 the family was living in Blyth at 17 Balgrave Road. Thomas entered Lloyds Bank and in 1921 was a cashier, a visitor to Lane Dykes Cottage, Hexham, with William Bell a market gardener and his unmarried daughter, Rebecca aged twenty-five whose occupation was ‘home duties’. It would be presumptuous to suggest that Thomas’s reason for visiting was Rebecca! In 1925 Thomas was in Yorkshire. On November 1925 Thomas Robson Shaw a bank clerk, aged twenty-nine married Etheline Murfin in Fulford Parish Church. Etheline’s father who had been a confectioner was dead at the time of the marriage. Etheline was born on 20 November 1894 and was the daughter of an American-born mother who was a maker of stays and corsets. She had worked with her mother but had trained as a milliner. Their daughter Ethel Shaw was born on 18 June 1908. In 1935 Thomas and Etheline were on the register of electors for Kingsway, Fenham, Newcastle. In 1939 their residence is given as Lloyds Bank, Rothbury Where Thomas was bank manager, and also in the Observer Corps. In the 1939 register there is, besides their married daughter, Ethel, a redacted entry. (For Ethel’s husband?) Etheline died in the first quarter of 1961 but there is no record of Thomas after the 1939 entry.