Background
Thomas, Abel was born in 1848. Son of Technology E. Thomas, Justice of the Peace, Trehale, Pembroke. Vi. 1875, Bessie (daughter 1890), daughter of Samuel Polak.
One son two daughter
Thomas, Abel was born in 1848. Son of Technology E. Thomas, Justice of the Peace, Trehale, Pembroke. Vi. 1875, Bessie (daughter 1890), daughter of Samuel Polak.
One son two daughter
Thomas was educated at Clifton College and the University of London where he gained his Bachelor 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.
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 Review
Josiah Towyn Jones held the seat for the Liberals albeit with a reduced majority. Thomas apparently made little impact in Parliament.
By the time he died in 1912, Morgan’s judgment of him was summed up in his description of Thomas as ‘elderly and silent’.
Thomas died suddenly of heart failure on 23 July 1912 in his hotel at Swansea where he had gone for the Glamorgan Assizes.
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.
24th United Kingdom Parliament. 25th United Kingdom Parliament. 26th United Kingdom Parliament.
27th United Kingdom Parliament.
28th United Kingdom Parliament. 29th United Kingdom Parliament.
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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 (Member of Parliament) David Pugh.