Thomas Wood Rutherford

He was educated at Dulwich College where he excelled at athletics and on leaving school was apprenticed as an engineer with Richardson Westgarth at Hartlepool.

From there he came to the University of Glasgow between 1906-1910 where he won his rugby Blue and then worked for John McNeil and Co. of Govan and was supervising the building of a sugar factory for them in the Phillipines when war broke out. He returned home immediately and in September of 1914 joined a Public Schools and University battalion at Epsom and was then commissioned into initially with the 11th Battalion Yorkshire Regiment in 1914.

2nd Lieutenant Rutherford joined the 6th Bn. at Witley Camp in Surrey in June of 1915 and on Saturday July 3rd sailed with the battalion from Liverpool bound for Gallipoli. On July 10th the battalion landed at Mudros Bay on the island of Lemnos and ten days later moved to Imbros for training and acclimatisation. On August 6th 1915 an officers conference was called and plans finalised for the landing on Gallipoli the following day. In the darkness of the early hours of August 7th, the battalion were towed ashore in lighters to land at Suvla Bay close to the Salt Lake.

2nd Lieutenant Rutherford saw action during the capture of the hill of Lala Baba during their first day on Gallipoli. On August 22nd an attack was planned on the Turkish held position of Scimitar Hill. The attack went in at 3.30pm against the Turkish line some eight hundred yards away at the base of the hill. 2nd Lieutenant Thomas Wood Rutherford was killed in this action on August 22nd 1915 at the age of 31.

He has no known grave, his body lost to the battlefield. He has a memorial inscription on the Helles Memorial situated on the Gallipoli peninsula. Thomas Wood Rutherford also has memorial inscription on his grandfather's and grandmother's headstone, which can be seen in the churchyard of the Parish Church Of Saint John the Evangelist at Seaham Harbour.