Tags
Bantock House Museum, Express and Star, research, Serbia, Tom Roberts, Wolverhampton Art Gallery
Thank you all for your responses to our appeal for more information on T. Roberts, who was awarded the Serbian Gold Medal for distinguished service during the First World War. With your help, we have been able to flesh out a bit more detail about the man behind the certificate, mainly thanks to this article in the Express & Star.
Tom H. Roberts was appointed Curator of Wolverhampton Art Gallery in 1948, having been Senior Assistant Curator for the previous 26 years. According to the article, he served for four years during the First World War, before being wounded and torpedoed, and most of his war-time service was spent as a member of the British Mission to the Serbian Army. This explains why he was awarded the Serbian Gold Medal, as well as why the certificate has found its way among the collection of material from Wolverhampton Art Gallery. We are still somewhat in the dark about his background, though, and, given the relative high frequency of his surname, we still need a bit more information before we can try and unearth his military records.
One of our Facebook followers have suggested that this may be Thomas Roberts (who was born about 1875-1878 in Wolverhampton), the son of Frederick Stephen Roberts and his wife Emma Louisa Bantock. If this is correct, that would mean that this certificate links with Bantock House as well as with Wolverhampton Art Gallery. If anybody has any further information, we would greatly appreciate it! Meanwhile, we will keep digging…
