Husband of Maria Smith, of 4 Elgin Street, Sunderland.
Linda Gowans has submitted the following:-
The name William Smith, though not on St Gabriel’s memorial board, is on the notice of those who served, and he is indicated as dying on active service. It has not been possible to trace a connection to St Gabriel’s for any William Smith, but first names were not always used, and not only did Thomas William live in the right area (Elgin Street was between Clanny Street and Chester Road), but his middle name is given in full, both by the CWGC and by his widow in two memorial notices (see below).
Thomas William Smith was born in Durham in 1878. He married Maria Boyes, also from Durham, in Sunderland in 1899. The 1901 census shows them at 23 Green Terrace, with two Sunderland-born children, stepson Thomas Boyes and daughter Elizabeth. Thomas William is working as a Ship Plater’s Labourer.
In 1911 he is at 4 Elgin Street, Bishopwearmouth, his employment now Machine Drilling at an Engine Works. Also present are Maria, four children, and 73-year-old widower Thomas J. Boyes, born Durham, probably Maria’s father.
Thomas William enlisted at Newcastle in the Northumberland Fusiliers at an unknown date. His Battalion went to France in January 1915, landing at Le Havre. After action in the Second Battle of Ypres and the Battle of Loos, in October they were sent from Marseilles to Alexandria in Egypt, and in January 1916 to Salonika. Deaths among British troops there, endangered by malarial terrain as well as by enemy activity, equalled those in action and from wounds combined. In July a number of men from the Battalion reported sick, and it was evidently decided to send at least some of them back to the UK, for we learn from the Sunderland Echo that Thomas William Smith died at sea on August 13th 1916 on board a transport ship returning from Salonika.
Both the notice that his wife placed in the newspaper in 1916 and her In Memoriam notice on August 13th 1919 – ‘Sadly missed by his loving wife, sons, and daughter’ – gives his full name Thomas William Smith. He was presumably buried at sea as there is no known grave. His is one of 2,174 names on the Doiran Memorial, Greece, which stands near Doiran Military Cemetery in the north of Greece, close to the Macedonia border and near the south-east shore of Lake Doiran.
Thomas William Smith is remembered at Sunderland on S140.010 and S140.048 part 3
