Tanner, TL

Captain Thomas Lanfear Tanner

Thomas was born on Boxing Day 1890, the middle of three children of a solicitor, William Tanner, and his wife, Fanny, all three of whom attended the College. He started in September 1904, two and a half years after his elder brother, William, and was at Dulwich for the next six years. He left in the summer of 1910, at the end of a year in which he had been a member of the 3^rd XV alongside his younger brother, Charles, and went on to Hertford College, Oxford, where he had earned a scholarship. Whilst there he earned a 2^nd in Classical Moderations in 1912, and went on to earn a 2^nd in Literae Humaniores two years later.

In the summer of 1914, shortly after leaving Oxford, Thomas applied for, and received, a commission in the Royal West Kent Regiment. He was promoted to Lieutenant early the next year, and subsequently made Captain, at first on an acting basis, that summer. Until the summer of 1917 he was on home service, mostly stationed in Kent, an opportunity he used to continue his education, working towards an M.A. at Oxford. In June 1917 he went over to France for the first time and was serving on the continent for around nine months before being invalided home at the end of March 1918 with an infected wound in his foot. He remained in England for several months, during which time he completed his M.A., before returning to France at the end of July. On September 18^th he was leading his company in an advance, on the front between Cambrai and St. Quentin, when he was struck and killed by a shell blast. Both of his brothers had fallen in the war the previous year, William that April and Charles that November.