Abel Thomas

Abel Thomas, c1905

Abel Thomas (1848 – 23 July 1912) was a Welsh Liberal politician and lawyer.

Family

Thomas was the son of a Baptist Minister, the Reverend T E Thomas JP of Trehale in Pembrokeshire. In 1875 he married Bessie Polak. They had a son and two daughters before his wife died in 1890.

Education and law career

Thomas was educated at Clifton College and the University of London where he gained his BA degree. He went into the law and was called to the Bar at the Middle Temple in 1873. He took silk in 1891 and became a Bencher of the Middle Temple in 1900. He was later elected Chairman of the Pembrokeshire Quarter Sessions. He also served for many years as a Justice of the Peace in Pembrokeshire.

Politics

Thomas entered the House of Commons at a by-election for the seat of Carmarthenshire East in 1890 on the death of the sitting Liberal Member of Parliament (MP) David Pugh. He held the seat with comfortable majorities at each succeeding election, except in the 1906 general election when he was returned unopposed. At the by-election caused by Thomas’ death on 22 August 1912, the Rev. Josiah Towyn Jones held the seat for the Liberals albeit with a reduced majority. Thomas apparently made little impact in Parliament. While the historian K O Morgan described him as one of the relatively young, Welsh born, nonconformist Liberal candidates who were responsible for changing the character of the Welsh parliamentary party in the 1880s and 1890s from the one dominated by traditional, Gladstonian, Anglican members. By the time he died in 1912, Morgan’s judgment of him was summed up in his description of Thomas as ‘elderly and silent’.^[1]

Death

Thomas died suddenly of heart failure on 23 July 1912 in his hotel at Swansea where he had gone for the Glamorgan Assizes.

References and other sources

• Who was Who, OUP 2007
• Obituary - The Times, 24 July 1913

See also

• List of United Kingdom by-elections (1900-1918)

External links

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Abel Thomas