Lance Corporal Thomas John Halliday
Halliday with his wife Jemima and their daughter Minnie, around 1913
Thomas John Halliday was born on 17 March 1887 at Cross, Rathfriland, County Down, the first of five children of mill worker Ellen Halliday. By the time of the 1911 Census he was living in James Street, Bessbrook, County Armagh, with his mother and his three surviving siblings, and working as a foreman cleaner in the linen mill. On 31 August that year he married Jemima Best in the Bessbrook Church of Ireland Parish Church. The couple had seven children over the next thirteen years.
Halliday enlisted in the North Irish Horse between 29 January and 12 April 1917 (No.2371 – later Corps of Hussars No.71779). He trained at the regiment's Antrim reserve camp before embarking for France in 1917 or 1918, where he was posted to one of the squadrons of the 1st North Irish Horse Regiment. This regiment served as corps cavalry to VII, XIX, then V Corps from its establishment in May 1916 until February-March 1918, when it was dismounted and converted to a cyclist unit, serving as corps cyclists to V Corps until the end of the war.
Halliday remained with the regiment throughout the war. On 12 February 1919 he was demobilised and transferred to Class Z, Army Reserve. He was granted a pension as a result of pulmonary tuberculosis, which was found to have been aggravated by his military service. In November 1921 his level of disability was assessed at 70 per cent. He died as a result of the tuberculosis at Bessbrook on 2 October 1926.
Halliday's brother William also served in the war, in the Royal Engineers, from May 1917 to March 1918, when he was discharged due to illness.
Halliday with his brother William
Images sourced from Ancestry.com Public Member Trees - contributor Craig Anderson.