We are extremely grateful to Tom’s granddaughter, Ann Siburuth, who is an enthusiastic family historian and has provided us with a wealth of information, documents and photographs.
Tom was the first child born to Robert and Mary Ann Palmer (nee Bunn) on the 9th August 1885. At the time, they lived at Folly Farm on Upgate Street, Carleton Rode, where Robert is described as a butcher (1891 Census) but the family moved to New Buckenham shortly afterwards. However, their stay in the nearby village was short and they returned to Carleton Rode in October 1893 and settled in a cottage on King Street/Flaxlands (now the top of Rode Lane) where Robert worked on a local farm.
Tom was admitted to Carleton Rode School in that year with his sisters Mary and Bessie. He was the oldest of ten children, three boys and seven girls (all of whom survived to adulthood). We know from school records that Tom caught scarlet fever in December 1896 and was off school for three months, as were his three siblings including Ethel (May) who later went on to marry Ambrose Leverett, one of our War Dead. Tom was joined at the school by younger siblings Robert (another casualty of the First World War) and Sarah in April 1897 and had the distinction of being mentioned as one of the ‘best children’ in August of that year. He left school shortly afterwards (aged 12) and worked on a farm as a carter (working with the horses and driving the waggons, as well as being a general labourer).
Tom was tall for the time, being almost six feet, but not particularly well developed as he was rejected by the army on his first attempt to join up aged 18 (his chest measurements were not sufficient to meet army requirements). However, a year later in 1905, aged 19 years and 9 months, he signed up for six years in the Norfolk militia, completed two months of training and was then enlisted into the regular army as a gunner (RGA). Fortunately, his granddaughter Ann has his full service record and so we are able to track the whole of his army career.
After signing up in July 1905, Tom trained in England until September 1906 when he was posted to India. Two years later, in November 1908, he was posted to Aden (which was part of British India), where he remained for the following two years. He was then posted back to India in October 1910. On the 1911 Census he was serving with the 75th Company in Connaught Barracks, Bombay (now Mumbai). A further two years were spent in India before he was posted back to Britain in October 1912. By this time, he had spent six years overseas. He decided to extend his service in the army and signed up for a further 12 years. This time he was posted to 38 Company defending the South Coast ports (Devonport and the huge naval dockyards in Plymouth) during the period of rising tensions in the years before the outbreak of the First World War and the first two years thereafter. During those four years, 1912-1916, he was appointed acting corporal/bombardier.
We know from his service record that Tom married Mary Elizabeth Bickford in the Wesleyan Chapel, Millbrook, Cornwall, on the 26th April 1916. She had been a domestic servant working at Tregonhawke Farm in the village and there is a wonderful family group photograph that survives of the wedding. Millbrook is very close to Plymouth and Tom’s granddaughter recalled her mother (Tom’s youngest daughter Minnie) telling her that her parents spent their days courting by promenading on Plymouth Hoe, and taking the ferries across Plymouth Sound to Millbrook. We also know from Tom’s army papers that the other two soldiers shown in the photograph are the witnesses named as Corporal William Russell of the Worcestershire Regiment, and Corporal John Edward Coppins of the Royal Engineers.
Six months after the wedding in November 1916, Tom was promoted to full Bombardier and posted to the RGA Siege Depot no 2 at Stowlangtoft, which is about 10 miles north-east of Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk.
So, this was how Tom and his pregnant wife came to Suffolk. The couple’s first child, a boy named Edward Tom, was born in Norton, a village just to the south of Stowlangtoft, on the 4th May, 1917. His mother’s brother, Edward Bickford, had been killed on the first day of the Battle of the Somme (1/7/1916), so it seems probable that he was named after this war hero. (Although Ann tells us that he was always known as just ‘Tom’ in the family.)
Just six months later in November, Tom was posted with his battery to Aldershot. This time his wife does not go with him. We can see from his army record that Mary and their baby son, go to live with her sister-in-law, May Leverett, in Crown Street, Banham, Norfolk, about 20 miles further north. May has two young children and her husband is a prisoner of war in Germany but at least Tom’s mother and siblings were still living close-by in Carleton Rode.
On the 21st May 1918, Bombardier Tom Palmer was posted with his battery to France, part of the BEF, where he remained until April 1919 having re-enlisted in the field on the 16.1.1919. Interesting to note that he enlisted as a Gunner and was immediately promoted to Bombardier (‘with seniority’ from Nov 1916) – and of course, more pay.
Returning to the UK, he was posted to Gosport in Hampshire and then onto Fareham where Mary joined him. However, soon becoming pregnant again, she returned to Norfolk, to an address on the Norwich Road in Besthorpe (just outside of Attleborough) and not far from the Palmer family. Their second child, Joyce Elizabeth, was born there on the 7th February 1920.
Mary and the two children returned to Hampshire and a third child, Hilda Mary, was born in a military hospital at Amport, near Andover, on the 22nd February 1922. However, Tom had already been posted out to India the previous November where he remained for the next 5 years. We know that Mary joined him there as their fourth child, Minnie, was born in Ranikhet (a hill station of the British Raj) on the 24th August 1924. It is not clear as to whether all the children joined them there (they would have been aged 5, 3 and I at the time), although Joyce’s sons remember her telling them stories of how the children chased the cart containing mangos which they caught when they dropped off the back.
During this tour of duty, Tom served for a total of 5 years in India, from November 1921 until November 1926, and on his discharge papers it stated that he was ‘under the disability of bad health in this climate’ and recommended a return to the UK. He had an ‘exemplary’ character and had trained as a telephone exchange operator to enable him to find work after he left the army. So, after a total of 21 years’ army service, Tom and his family returned to Carleton Rode. However, they did not stay in Norfolk but moved to Coney Weston in Suffolk (not far from where Tom and Mary lived for a short time during the First World War), and Tom returned to working as a farm labourer.
Three more children were born to the couple in Suffolk: Robert John (Bob) born 27/11/27, Ronald Henry (Ronnie) born 23/10/30 and Peter Reginald born in 1938. In later life Bob wrote a fascinating memoir for his children – a vivid depiction of his rural Suffolk childhood – and recalled that Tom was also the carer to a retired colonel living in Coney Weston Hall for a time. (Records show that Coney Weston House – the former dower house to Coney Weston Hall – had a Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Spencer Follett living there at the time – he died in January 1940, so that seems to fit.)
Granddaughter Ann recalls her Mum (Tom and Mary’s youngest daughter, Minnie) describing a quite difficult home life with continual arguments. She said that her father was a quiet man who felt nagged and that she (Minnie) would often give him half a crown from her meagre wages to go down to the local pub for a pint and some peace. She also said that her mother hated her father smoking his pipe in the house and that also caused arguments. When Minnie was courting, her mother wouldn’t let the boyfriend into the house either!
By the time of the 1939 Register, the family had moved to a council house in nearby Barningham. Tom was still working as a farm labourer and Edward (Tom), the eldest boy was working on a poultry farm; the three younger boys were all at school. The three girls were now living and working away from home – all ‘in-service’ – as domestic servants for ‘well-to-do’ families.
Joyce was not too far away in Great Barton and there is an interesting Indian connection with the family for whom she works; Sir Ralph Griffith is an eminent retired ex-Indian Army Officer and the first Governor of North West Province during the time of the British Raj.
Hilda was working as a housemaid for a landowner, living at Croxton Park House near Thetford, and Minnie was a domestic servant for the Innes family living in Horringer Manor near Bury St Edmunds. (Ann remembers taking her mother back to visit the house many years later when it had become a nursing home, although it is now a private house again.)
At some point during this period, Tom was diagnosed with leukemia and Minnie remembered him having to eat raw minced liver (blood and all) three times a week – which must have been quite an ordeal. He died in 1946, two days before his 61st birthday, and is buried in the cemetery in Barningham. His middle daughter, Hilda, is buried with him and hers is a tragic story.
Hilda signed up for the WAAF and achieved the rank of Leading Aircraftwoman. During her service, from 1941 to 1944, she contracted TB and was involved in the first clinical trials of the drug Streptomycin. For Hilda this had a devastating effect on her mental health and she tried more than once to commit suicide. She was admitted to St Audrey’s Hospital, a mental asylum, in Melton near Woodbridge, Suffolk, where she died from TB in July 1950. She received an official scroll from ‘King and Country’ which clearly states that she gave her life during World War 2. She was buried with full military honours.
Joyce also served in the WAAF. She met and married Robert Cooper, who was in the RAF. He continued in the service after the war and became a Squadron Leader.
Minnie, the youngest daughter, joined the Women’s Land Army from 1943 to the end of 1946 and received a letter of gratitude from Queen Elizabeth (later known as the Queen Mother).
Ann now takes over the story of her Mum, Minnie, (and a little more about what happened to all the children of Tom and Mary Palmer).
At the end of the war, Mum left the Land Army and transferred to the NAAFI. She was living at home now, working at East Wretham Polish Resettlement Corps as a cook in the canteen. She often told us stories about the rabbit pies they made with the meat smelling strongly because it wasn’t as fresh as it should be. If the soldiers knew what they were eating, they would have spat it out! It was a wonder no one ever got food poisoning. This is where she met her future husband – Ludwik Wojturski (the boyfriend mentioned above). He had been a prisoner in a Siberian Family Forced Labour Camp until the “amnesty” Stalin issued to all Poles once Germany attacked the Soviet Union. His journey to freedom was an indescribable horror, but once free (in Persia – now Iran) he joined the Polish Air Force and was sent to England as part of 306 Polish Fighter Squadron, based at RAF Coltishall.
After the war, my father had no wish to return to Poland as his home was no longer there (and the outstanding contribution of the Polish troops during the war led to the Polish Resettlement Act of 1947.) Minnie met Ludwik at the Resettlement Camp and at first totally rejected the former airman’s advances. However, she was eventually persuaded to change her mind and agreed to go out with Ludwik after repeated requests for a date. There are some very funny stories about her and other NAAFI girls going to dances with their Polish beaus, some of them perching on bicycle handlebars! Minnie and Ludwik were relocated to Lancashire, marrying in 1947 and went on to have two children.
Returning to the Palmer boys; Edward (Tom), Robert (Bob), Ronald (Ronnie) and Peter – during their childhood years, they all worked after school and at weekends looking after chickens for a Professor Clackworthy at Bowbeck Farm just outside of Barningham.
When war broke out in 1939, Tom (born 1917) joined the R.A.S.C. as a driver.
Post-war, he worked for Hogg’s Builders. He married Ethel Leaper from the nearby village of Hopton whose parents had the village shop and sold just about everything. After her parents’ death, Ethel and Tom inherited the property. As a child, I remember visiting them and being in the shop – and that it had a cottage attached to the back of it.
Ronnie (born 1930) spent his life on the land – starting as a farm labourer and working his way up to becoming farm manager at Home Farm, Barningham. He married a local girl and they had two children. The farm owner was an absentee boss, so Ronnie moved into Home Farm for a few years with his family. On retirement, Ronnie left Home Farm and moved into a bungalow on the main road in Hopton, not far from the village shop where his brother and wife lived. Both Tom and Ronnie are buried in the small cemetery in Hopton.
Bob (born in 1927) wrote about his life detailing all the important memories for him. He recalled that during the war, with able-bodied men joining up, and being big for his age, he was often allowed to miss school to help on local farms with haymaking or harvesting. As was typical for the time, he left school (at 14) with no qualifications and worked as a baker’s boy. He describes cycling to work by 5 o’clock each morning whatever the weather. Lighting the bake oven was the first task of the day, after which he had to heave heavy sacks of flour from the granary ready for the Master Baker. He was involved in all aspects of bread making – and there were some perks, including managing to pinch a few eggs from the owner’s hen house to go with fresh bread for breakfast. In the afternoons, he would cycle round the village with a large basket on the front of his bike delivering all the bread to customers. His last job before going home was to scrub the bake house floor and then he would have to cycle four miles home. Happy but hard times.
Although he had had little formal education, the war provided possibilities for Bob and just before his fifteenth birthday, he joined the Army as a ‘boy apprentice’, enlisting in 1942. He completed his apprenticeship with Royal Electrical Mechanical Engineers (REME) and forged a career for himself visiting many overseas countries – India, Egypt, and Libya to name a few.
Bob met his future wife, Barbara, during the latter years of the war whilst home on Christmas leave. She happened to be another Land Girl and worked on the same farm as my Mum, Minnie, at Stoke-by-Nayland. It was Mum’s main job to look after the pigs, and she always had a soft spot for them. She always said they were really clean animals if looked after properly. Barbara’s main job was milking the cows twice daily and generally caring for them. I expect they both had other jobs as well. Mum only ever talked about “her” pigs. Bob and Barbara married in 1951 and went on to have four children.
Peter, the youngest of Tom and Mary’s children, was born in 1938 and was always interested in engineering. He joined an engineering firm upon leaving school as an apprentice mechanic. Peter married and had a son – and the family later started their own engineering company.
Tom’s wife, Mary, continued to live in Barningham until her death aged 94 in 1990, outliving her husband and two of her children. She is buried in the Churchyard.
If there’s anything that you can add to this, please get in touch.