Ministry, bereavement and investigation
Thomas was born at Taunton in the late 1860s; biographical sources differ between 1867 and 1868. His father, John Wesley Thomas, was a Methodist minister. After initially going into business, he entered Richmond Theological College in 1889 and served Methodist circuits before joining the Leysian Mission in London in 1907. He continued preaching and lecturing after retirement. His interest in survival after death developed within his Christian vocation, rather than replacing it.
In February 1917 he began sittings with Gladys Osborne Leonard, the trance medium through whom Oliver Lodge had sought contact with his son Raymond. Thomas came to identify communicators as his own father, who had died in 1903, and later his sister Etta, who died in 1920 after sharing in his investigations. He recorded messages carefully, checked their details and made material available to fellow researchers. His contemporary obituaries particularly valued that habit of documentation.
Some New Evidence for Human Survival appeared in 1922, followed by further books and papers. Thomas served on the Society for Psychical Research’s council from 1934 until his death in 1953. His later proxy sittings attempted to obtain information for people unknown to the medium while the sitter also lacked the knowledge needed to recognise an answer. The Bobby Newlove series became the subject of An Amazing Experiment. For Thomas, these investigations offered both an intellectual problem and reassurance about continuing family relationships.
