TOM COOPS 

1565 Sapper Tom Coops, 31st (Fortress) Company, Royal Engineers, was accidentally killed in the collision of two armoured trains near Stormberg, Burgersdorp, on 31st January 1902. He is buried at Burgersdorp Cemetery, Eastern Cape, South Africa.

Remembered in the Municipal Building, Crewe
Tom is commemorated on a plaque on the ground floor of the Municipal Building, Earle Street, Crewe, along with six local men from the Royal Engineers who did not return to Crewe from the Boer War, Sappers Ankers, Darlington, Evans, Foy, Madeley, Roberts, Robinson and Talbot, and Lieutenant Charles Trotter from Polesworth in Warwickshire.

  

What do we know about Tom's life?

Tom Coops was born in Audley, Staffordshire in the summer of 1877, the seventh of John (1842 – 1916) and Jane (1845 – 1928) nee Cooper’s twelve children. The census of 5th April 1891 shows 13-year-old Tom was a coal miner, like his father and his elder brother Charles Edwin (1875 – 1951). The oldest brother William (1865 - 1943) was a brickmaker.

Tom grew up in Audley, on Wood Street and Chester Road, but at some point, the whole family moved to Crewe, and in 1901 were living at 166 Earle Street. Tom was an engine driver at Crewe Steam Sheds. His younger brother Fred (1879 – 1964) was a stoker. His brother Charles was a signalman.

Tom enlisted into the Royal Engineers on 25th April 1898, when he was twenty years old. The Volunteers were sent to South Africa where the skills of the Crewe railwaymen were needed to maintain the lines. The collision of the armoured trains near Lalisa Station, Stormberg involved three other men of the Cheshire Royal Engineer Volunteers – 27952 Corporal S H Brewer (29), 8457 Sapper W A Gallagher (22) and 8462 Sapper J G Hother (21), who died of “injuries sustained in the collision on railway”.

Tom was killed on 31st January 1902 (shown as 1st Feb 1902 according to the Army Record of Soldiers’ Effects). His father John was named as next of kin, so we can assume that Tom was unmarried when he died, aged 24.