| Description | Work completed by volunteer includes the following information:
Rifleman Thomas Campey died of dysentry on 21 Apr 1915 in a prisoner of war camp, in Gustrow, in Mecklenburg, northern Germany. He was buried in the camp cemetery but in 1920 his body was moved to a cemetery in Hamburg. His death is surrounded by some controversy.
Thomas was born on 24 Apr 1882, his mother Emma Jane Campey (nee Pybus) dying shortly after the birth on 2 May 1882. His father Thomas remarried Emma Hudson. Thomas had two stepbrothers, Alfred Donald and Allan Roy and a stepsister, Murie. His father was a painter/decorator and the family lived at 50 Wood Lane in Beverley. Thomas was an apprentice tailor but in 1905 he enlisted in the regular army as a rifleman in the 1st Battalion, King's Royal Rifles and spent five years of service in India. In 1912 he left the army but stayed part of the Army Reserve. He found employment as a tram conductor on Hull Corporation Tramway. On 22 June 1913 he married Cecelia Rosalie Gwendoline Haynes in Hull.
Thomas was recalled to the military when war broke out and served on the Western Front, winning the 1914 Star. The events that led to his being taken prisoner by the Germans are not documented but the Beverley Guardian of 12 Dec 1914 notes that his father received a letter from him and that he was in Gustrow POW camp (with a R Baldwin also from Beverley).
He died of dysentery in 1915 and May 1916 the Tramways Manager wrote to the War Office on behalf of his wife who was anxious to know the circumstances of his death. She said that his letters home had complained of shortages of food and neglect and notes that she did not know whether the food parcels she had sent from home had reached him. There is no record of any response from the War Office or of any action from the ICRC.
Thomas is remembered on the St Mary's Church Roll of Honour, the Hengate Memorial in Beverley and on the East Riding Memorial in Beverley Minster.
Includes photograph, information taken from census, military records, Commonwealth War Graves, newspapers |