James Thomas Tomms

James, born in 1895, was one of five children of father James Berry and mother Mary Ann, all born in Coventry, Warwickshire. James Berry had worked for a cycle-manufacturer in Coventry where the family lived at 3 Gosford Terrace. Moving to Stamford he went to work at Kitson’s Empire Lighting company in Wharf Road, Stamford. This was a successful workshop making paraffin lamps so may have offered him a better reward than making cycle mudguards. The family had no known connection with Stamford. James Thomas went to work as a news agent (possibly delivering newspapers?) and the family lived at 1 Perkins Buildings, Water Street, a group of three tenements alongside the river. They were still there in 1916 but there is no record of James Thomas serving in WW I.