Thomas Wallace, 1891-1965

Abstract

Thomas Wallace was the eighth child of a family of nine, three sons and six daughters. His father, also Thomas, was a blacksmith and agricultural engineer carrying on a family business at Newton-on-the-Moor, near Alnwick. From the beginning of the nineteenth century the Wallace smithy had served the needs of the local farming community, shoeing their horses and mending their simple agricultural machinery. Two of Thomas Wallace’s sons showed the family bent for engineering, but the third, who bore his father’s name and who is the subject of this memoir, had, as he often said himself, no skill in engineering nor any liking for the work; his interests were in scholarship, catholic at first, but soon to be canalized in the study of pure science. Thomas Wallace senior had married Mary Thompson, also of a Northumberland country family. Before their eighth child was born on 5 September 1891 he moved to Burradon, where he expanded his business by undertaking work for the collieries. Thomas junior’s childhood was spent in his native village, where although the country was still pleasant and highly farmed, mining activities had already begun to bring about those changes which later were to take away so much of its beauty. Wallace as a boy was attracted to the farms and he spent many happy days on them, playing and watching the men at work. As he grew older he began to share in the work of haymaking and harvest. It is to this country background that can be attributed the ease with which he later became absorbed in the agricultural community he served.