Rectory Lane Cemetery, Berkhamsted

Thomas E. Fry

13/03/1882 –1943

A private soldier who was commissioned; served throughout WW1 and in Ireland; divorced.

• Melanie Hilton

Unmarked grave Thomas Edward Fry (1882-1943)

Not a great deal has been discovered about Thomas’s childhood other than that he was born 13 March 1882 in  Portsmouth.

He joined the Army in 1901 aged 19 and served in the ranks almost for almost 14 years as a private, then almost two years as a Warrant Office with the 1^st Battalion,  Essex Regiment. He fought in the Balkans in 1915 and likely served at Gallipoli and later in Egypt. By 1917 he was a 2^nd Lieutenant.

Thomas married Reta [sic] Blanche Gooding, 31 May 1916 in Colchester. They were to have no children.

In June 1921 Thomas was a Lieutenant with the 1^st Battalion Essex Regiment, Kinsale Barracks, Co. Cork. The 1st Battalion Essex Regiment was stationed in Cork from January 1919 until, in February 1922, they were moved to Carrickfergus, Ulster in accordance with the treaty signed to evacuate the Irish Free State. It was a difficult and controversial posting with soldiers being killed by the IRA and allegations of brutality against the 1^st Essex. It must have been hard for soldiers who had already fought through the First World War to find themselves in such a situation.

Thomas appears in the Berkhamsted Electroal Registers between 1924-6 living in “Rooms over garage near tennis courts in Lower King’s Road” and from 1927 at 16 Cowper Road. Reta does not appear on the electoral registers with him until 1930.

The marriage was not happy and Reta left Thomas in February 1934 to move to Chesham, she said, because of his affair with Miss Edith Mary Bristow of Curtis Way, Berkhamsted. Edith was 28 years younger than Thomas.

In December 1936 a decree nisi was granted to Reta in the Divorce Court on the grounds of Thomas’s adultery. “The judge exercised his discretion in favour of Mrs Fry in respect of her own adultery.”

Reta married George D Thom in 1937. Edith and Thomas married in 1938.

In the 1939 Register Thomas was “Swimming bath superintendent” and living at 16, Cowper Road with Edith.

He died in 1943. Edith survived him and died in 1961.