23 Facts About Tom Bridges

Tom Bridges was born at Park Farm, Eltham, Kent, England, to Major Thomas Walker Tom Bridges and Mary Ann Philippi.

Tom Bridges was educated at Newton Abbot College and later at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich.

Tom Bridges was married in London on 14 November 1907, to a widow, Janet Florence Marshall; they had one daughter, Alvilde Bridges.

The daughter was given a Norwegian name when her mother discovered that Tom Bridges was having an affair with a Norwegian ballet dancer called Avilde; the name was to be a permanent rebuke to Tom Bridges' adultery.

Tom Bridges was promoted to lieutenant on 19 February 1895, and was seconded to the Central Africa Regiment from July to November 1899.

Tom Bridges was confirmed as captain in the Royal Artillery on 8 January 1902, and served in South Africa till the end of the war in June 1902, after which he left Cape Town in the SS Plassy in August, returning to Southampton the following month.

Tom Bridges was appointed military attache to the Low Countries and Scandinavia between 1910 and 1914.

Early in World War I, Tom Bridges was involved in the Battle of Mons, where he suffered a shattered cheekbone and concussion.

Tom Bridges was appointed a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George in late 1915 and given command of the 19th Division, a Kitchener's Army formation, which was demoralised after severe casualties at the Battle of Loos.

Tom Bridges set about turning the 19th Division into an efficient fighting unit, purging the senior officers.

Tom Bridges ran into some difficulty because, like most senior British commanders and politicians, he pushed for the amalgamation or incorporation of Americans into understrength British units to be commanded by British officers.

Tom Bridges returned in time to lead his division in the Battle of Passchendaele in the second half of 1917.

Tom Bridges recovered quickly and after a three-month stint as head of the trench warfare department of Winston Churchill's Ministry of Munitions, was sent back to the United States, specifically Washington, DC, to coordinate the dispatch of American reinforcements to the Western Front.

Subsequently, Tom Bridges was appointed to liaison missions to Greece, the Balkans, and Russia.

Tom Bridges was appointed Governor of South Australia in 1922, at the instigation of his friend Winston Churchill.

Tom Bridges was a conservative governor, defending capital punishment, supporting the Legislative Council, and denouncing "unemployables".

Tom Bridges's speeches were dominated mostly by denouncements of Bolshevism, and promotion of immigration.

Tom Bridges travelled to the Northern Territory in 1923 by motor-car in a well publicized trip.

Tom Bridges wrote about her experiences in A Walkabout in Australia published in 1925.

Tom Bridges was particularly angered by Premier John Gunn's publishing of a secret memorandum of a former premier to the governor.

Tom Bridges had studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, and was an accomplished painter.

Tom Bridges held many one-man exhibitions in Adelaide and London where his oils and watercolours were sold.

Tom Bridges died at 12 Dyke Road, Brighton, on 26 November 1939, not long after the outbreak of World War II.