Early Life
He was born in Maesteg, the town to which his parents had moved from West Wales where his father had worked as a gardener in various country mansions. The family returned for a while to Cardigan and Cilgerran where Thomas received his early education. He subsequently returned to Maesteg and until 1906 attended school there. To his dismay, his father came home from work one day and announced that he had ‘had a start’ for him at the Oakwood colliery. His hopes for further education were thus dashed.
David Thomas was employed as a clerk at three collieries from 1906-15. For five of these years he worked at Torycoed Colliery, Llantrisant. Anxious to further his education, he attended night classes in typing and shorthand. This training proved invaluable to him when, in later years, he attended meetings of the South Wales Miners' Federation (SWMF).
Thomas married Bessie, a teacher, in 1923. She died in September 1953.
Read more about this topic: David Thomas (British Politician)
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“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
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