~ Chapter Sixteen ~
“Little Boy Crying”

Thomas Frederick Gisby, the third son of Charlie and Amy, was born in their house at 9 Market Street, Margate, in September 1899, five years after Steve and seven after George.

            In that same year, in what was to be her final public engagement, Queen Victoria laid the foundation stone of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.  Lord Salisbury reached the halfway point of his third and last term as her country’s Prime Minister.  And while her vast Empire continued to bask in “splendid isolation”, the Boer War erupted in South Africa when the Siege of Mafeking began.

            Thomas was not yet seven when Amy met her tragic end in April 1906.  Much younger than his brothers, he is likely to have been more traumatised by her death than them, perhaps always being remembered from the report of Amy’s inquest as “her little boy crying outside the shop being unable to get in”.  He is also likely to have felt less resentment than George and Steve to their father’s association with Elizabeth Holmes and to the family’s subsequent move to Addington Street; indeed, we know that in later years he was in regular touch with his stepmother and her children.

            Growing up in the early years of the twentieth century, young Tom would have heard about and been enthralled by the great events taking place around the world.  In the month before Amy’s death, San Francisco was destroyed by an earthquake.  A few years later, in 1909, the American explorer, Robert Peary, reached the geographic North Pole, claiming to be the first person to have done so.  In the same year, the French aviator, Louis Blériot, completed the first flight across the English Channel.  Then in 1911 the Norwegian explorer, Roald Amundsen, became the first person to reach the South Pole.  But perhaps for Tom the most enthralling event of all occurred when the largest passenger steamship in the world, RMS Titanic, sank in April 1912, resulting in the deaths of more than 1,500 people.  This is how the disaster was first reported by The New York Times:
Latest News from the Sinking Ship
CAPE RACE, N. F., Sunday night, April 14. – At 10:25 o’clock to-night the White Star line steamship Titanic called “C. Q. D.” to the Marconi wireless station here, and reported having struck an iceberg.  The steamer said that immediate assistance was required.

             Half an hour afterward another message came reporting that they were sinking by the head and that women were being put off in the lifeboats.

             The weather was calm and clear, the Titanic’s wireless operator reported, and gave the position of the vessel as 41.46 north latitude and 50.14 west longitude.

             The Marconi station at Cape Race notified the Allan liner Virginian, the captain of which immediately advised that he was proceeding for the scene of the disaster.

             The Virginian at midnight was about 170 miles distant from the Titanic and expected to reach that vessel about 10 A. M. Monday.

             2 A. M., Monday. – The Olympic at an early hour this, Monday, morning, was in latitude 40.32 north and longitude 61.18 west.  She was in direct communication with the Titanic, and is now making all haste toward her.

             The steamship Baltic also reported herself as about 200 miles east of the Titanic, and was making all possible speed toward her.

             The last signals from the Titanic were heard by the Virginian at 12:27 A. M.

             The wireless operator on the Virginian says these signals were blurred and ended abruptly.
            Not long after the sinking of the Titanic, Tom would have heard news of other events closer to home: the first rumblings of a great war that was brewing across the English Channel.  Then he would have watched, probably in envy, as his two older brothers went off to join The Buffs in 1914 to “do their bit” in that war.  Young as he was, he would not be far behind them, but it was service at sea, rather than in the “poor bloody infantry”, that would beckon.