Thomas Herbert Osborne 1881-1948
Thomas Herbert Osborne (1881-1948) and Ada Mary Harris (1888-1965)
Our grandfather Thomas Herbert Osborne was born on 6 Sep 1881 at 23 Great St. Andrew Street, St Giles, London. He was the sixth and last child of James Osborne and Margaret Catchpole. They weren't living at that address a few months earlier when the 1881 census was taken, so they must have moved in only a short time before Thomas was born.
This picture of Seven Dials below dates from about the time that Thomas was born. Great St. Andrew Street is the road straight ahead. Number 23 is about 150 yards along on the left hand side of the road.
It seems to be a respectable area, not at all what you might have expected from the reputation of the area. But this is one of the main routes through Seven Dials and probably the side streets are where the real poverty exists.
Thomas is 9 years old when we next see him in the 1891 census. He is living with his mother Margaret and two older brothers Henry (22) and Charles (18). By this time his father James has disappeared. Five years later in 1896 Thomas’s mother Margaret died, leaving Thomas more or less as an orphan aged 15.. His father James remarried only six weeks after his wife's death. I think Thomas wanted nothing more to do with his father - he joined the Royal Navy as a boy entrant on 20 August 1898.
He moved immediately down to the training ship HMS Impregnable in Devonport, Plymouth. He spent just over a year there and then moved to another training ship HMS Agincourt in Portland for another six months. On the 10th January 1900 he was assigned to his first seagoing ship HMS Majestic at Portsmouth naval base. This marks the start of the Osborne connection with the Portsmouth area. He stayed in the Navy for 21 years leaving in November 1919. In the First World War he served on destroyers operating on coastal defence, and took part in the only large naval battle of the war, in 1916 at the Battle of Jutland. He was invalided out of the service in 1919 with chronic bronchitis and emphysema.
On 13th April 1909 he married Ada Mary Harris in Portsmouth Register Office. At the time of his marriage Thomas was serving on HMS Duke of Edinburgh. The wedding was probably a quiet affair. Thomas had no relatives in Portsmouth. Ada’s only close relative still alive was her brother William Harris. I suspect he wasn’t there because if he was then he would probably have signed as a witness. The witness names are not family members.
Their first child Edward Charles (Uncle Ted) was born early in 1910. At the time of the 1911 census on 2nd April, Thomas was in Gibraltar on HMS Good Hope, and Ada was living at 106 Malins Road, Portsmouth with Ted who was now 1 year old. By 1919 when Thomas left the Navy they had 5 children. Ted was the only boy so far.
Thomas joined the Merchant Navy not long after he left the RN. He served only until November 1921. After 1921 he worked for a while as a labourer for Portsmouth Water Company. I do recall Mum saying that he suffered for years with his chest, which ties up with his ill health discharge from the Navy.
Over the next few years Thomas and Ada had four more children, and the complete family looked like this.
Thomas died in 1948.