So, that was Thomas's colourful life. But it looks like his son Willie was also rather interesting.
As mentioned, he was a 17 year old conductor in 1881, but later that year he was lawfully married (3 Oct 1881) to a Laura (nee Rose). He and Laura had a daughter, Rose Nelly/Nellie, on 24 June 1882, but Willie and Laura then seem to have gone their separate ways because Laura went on to marry (bigamously) Frederick Mullins in 1896, falsely claiming to be a widow. From their children's birth dates it looks likely they were together by the mid-1880s.
Willie and Laura's daughter, Rose, repeated her mother's history by marrying her second husband, Richard Clinton, bigamously in 1907, falsely claiming to be a widow - but before her first husband had in fact died. (She then "remarried" Richard, lawfully this time, as soon as her first husband was deceased in late 1910).
Meanwhile, Willie got together with Emma King and in 1864 had their first child William. Willie never married Emma (so technically he wasn't a bigamist) but they went on to have thirteen illegitimate children - William, George, Albert, Bessie, Augustus, Ernest, James, Edward, John, Lourina, Nellie, and Harry (Henry Harry). The list only has twelve so we think one died without being recorded on a census. Some have registered births, but some don't - Harry for instance. William joined the army and his medical examination says he had "deformed feet, rheumatic pains in his feet and legs since a bout of measles in childhood, and neurofibromatosis". We also know that Ernest died in 1918 when his ship HMS Kale was mined.
Willie came to a premature end in 1908 when he was found dead under a "brake" in Shirland Mews, Willesden). His death certificate says he had a weak heart and pneumonia but the report of his death in the Willesden Chronicle says he was regularly drunk and had a belly full of beer at the time of his death - he is said to have gone under the vehicle for a sleep.
