Charles "Charlie" Thomson
There are two Charlie Thomsons in the SFHG portfolio, distinguishing between the two made all more complicated because both played for Sunderland as well the national side. But they were a generation apart and here the one in question, Charles Morgan Thomson, is the younger.
He was born in 1910 and in Pollokshields, the son of Alexander, a locally-born house-painter, and local-girl, Martha Morgan. And in terms of football it all began there too, at Pollok F.C. before in 1931 at twenty, an attacking right-half, he was signed to Roker Park, mid-table in the English First Division.
And he was to stay with The Black Cats for fifteen seasons, albeit including the war years, to at the age finally of thirty-six drop down for a season to County Durham club, Spennymoor United. By then he had racked up over 260 starts for his senior club, winning with it the League in 1936, having been runners-up the previous season, the FA Cup in 1937 and that same year a single cap, against Czechoslovakia. He had also met and in 1934 married locally, his wife Frances Bailey.
After football Charlie in a sense returned to the family business, becoming a painter, but in his case in a shipyard. And that would be his life until retirement, the couple settling in Sherburn, a Durham village north of Sunderland and seeming not to have had any children. Indeed, it would be from there he would die in 1984 at the age of seventy-three, survived by Frances by two decades. She would pass away, still in Co, Durham, in 2005 at the age of ninety-three.
Birth Locator:
1910 - 25, Woodrow St., Pollokshields, Glasgow
Residence Locations:
1911 - 25, Woodrow St., Pollokshields, Glasgow
1921 - 50, Rossendale Rd., Shawlands, Glasgow
1939 - 4, Hawthorn Terrace, Seaburn, Sunderland, Co. Durham
1984 - Liddle Ave., Sherburn Hill, Co. Durham
Death Locator:
1984 - Durham, Co. Durham
Grave Locator:
Mere Knolls Cemetery, Sunderland
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