Tom Tuohy (1917-2008)

Occupations: Chemist and Nuclear Administrator

Tom Tuohy is best known for averting a nuclear disaster by leading a team to extinguish a fire in Pile No 1 at Windscale, Sellafield, West Cumberland in 1957. The cause of the fire, the methods used to put it out, and the political cover up by Harold Macmillan’s government remain controversial, and he received no official recognition for his bravery. Much has been written about the Windscale Incident, and it will not be discussed in any detail here. When UKAEA chairman Sir John Hill wrote to congratulate Tom on his CBE on 1 January 1969, he mentioned his ‘courage in the face of real danger at Windscale’ to which Tom replied ‘this is not to me of significance, as had I not been available to deal with the situation, there would undoubtedly have been someone else prepared to take the risks which I took on October 10^th 1957’.

His career began in 1939 as a chemist, making explosives in Royal Ordnance Factories. This was under the aegis of the Ministry of Supply, which from 1946 was also involved with atomic weapons production. Tom played several significant roles in speeding up the production of materials required for the production of Britain’s first atom bomb which was exploded in October 1952 on Trimouille Island, off Western Australia. He subsequently worked for the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA), established in 1954. He had a brief high-profile period in the 1960s and his success in improving productivity was recognized by his CBE. He achieved an international reputation and regularly attended and spoke at conferences but following a brief period as MD of Urenco-Centec, suddenly stopped working in 1974. After a working life of 35 years he enjoyed 34 years of retirement, with a lot of travelling, and in spite of receiving a significant radiation dose from the Windscale fire he lived to be 90. He died in Newcastle, Australia, cared for by his daughter, Kate Tuohy Main, but for many years he had divided his time between Cumberland and California, where his third wife lived. In 2003 he wrote fragments of an autobiography, and this supplements archival material, appointment diaries and annotated photo albums, all of which provide the basis for this biography.

Family Background

Thomas was born in Simpson’s Hotel at Wallsend, on Tyneside, on 7 November 1917, the same day as the October Revolution began in Russia. This building, of 1912 with 300 rooms, was close to the Swan Hunter shipyard, where RMS Mauretania was built in 1906 initially to provide temporary accommodation for sailors whose ships were being repaired. During the Great War this was an Admiralty hostel, which was managed jointly by Tom’s parents, Michael Tuohy (1893-1973), an Irish Roman Catholic and Isabella Chassels Robertson (1894-1973), a Scottish Presbyterian, who had been married on 10 August 1916 at Tynemouth Registry Office.

Michael Tuohy was born near Killadysert, Co Clare, on Inishloe, Low Island, an island of 130 acres in the tidal Fergus estuary of the River Shannon, but aged 18, in Dublin he signed up with the Irish Guards and moved from Ireland to Wellington Barracks on Birdcage Walk in London. As Private 4126 with No 1 company he was over 6ft tall, and took his turn standing guard at Buckingham Palace. In 1912 he was awarded certificates of education as he was hoping to become a teacher within the service but was retired because of ill health later that year. By 1916 he is described as an insurance agent. Isabella Chassels Robertson was born in 1894 in Hamilton, Lanarkshire to Peter Robertson, a railway locomotive driver, and his wife Margaret Thompson. They had 11 children. Isabella was a trainee nurse in 1915. It is not clear how they met, but Simpson’s Hotel required a married couple to be manager and manageress. Their ages on the marriage certificate are given as 26 and 25, though they were in fact only 23 and 22, so there may have been minimum age requirement for the position. They were sufficiently successful in running the hotel soon to become supervisors of all the Tyneside Admiralty Hostels. Photographs of the dining room show a lot of working men served by waitresses neatly turned out with starched white aprons and caps. A second son, Peter (1918-2000) was born on 26 October 1918.

Next, Michael Tuohy became proficient as a radio engineer. In June 1921, with Isabella as joint partner, they bought the small Crompton’s Hotel, opposite the LNER railway station in South Shields, Co Durham, and also purchased ‘stock, instruments, and shop fittings necessary to commence business for the sale, manufacture and repair of Radio Receivers, and all parts required to make Radio Crystal Receivers, including the manufacture and sale of Accumulators’. The BBC only started broadcasts in 1922, so Michael was something of a pioneer at Radio Corner, operating as Tuohy’s Wireless, Gramophone & Cycles. The family lived on Mile End Road until 1929 when they moved to a detached house overlooking the sea, Northcroft, the Lawe, South Shields, where they lived until 1933. In that year he was registered with the police in Davos, and this may be when he had a pioneering operation which involved the collapsing of a lung at a sanatorium.

As his life had been spared he made a vow to the Blessed Virgin Mary, and later was keen that his grandchildren should be brought up as Roman Catholics. For health reasons the family moved to Bournemouth, living from 1933-1940 at 82 Brackendale. On 19 May 1934 Michael and Isabella became partners in the business of Tuohy’s Radio on Wimborne Road, Moordown, with a capital sum of £5000. The business prospered and apart from further ventures in property Michael indulged in motor yachts of increasing size: Puma in 1932, Espuma, in 1937 and in 1938 the 58 foot Zephyr. These were harboured at Hamworthy, Poole Harbour, and in Spring 1939 Zephyr was sailed across the Irish Sea to Low Island, Co Clare. Then Zephyr was acquired by the Ministry of War Transport in January 1943. The family moved to Goodwood, 1 Dunkeld Rd, Bournemouth, and later to 3 Queens Park Gardens, where a two day sale of contents took place in July 1945 before they moved to Co Clare, to avoid high taxation. Here they bought Cragleigh House, set in 14 acres, near Ennis from where Tuohy & Company operated as Marine Motor and Radio Engineers, and they farmed cattle, sheep and poultry, on a small scale. Isabella also made butter in the dairy in the basement of the house.

Michael then bought Inishtubrid, another island near Canon Island, and also owned the property on Inishloe where he was born, the last habitable house on the island. Michael tired of his old friends repeatedly touching him for money and increasing deafness meant he had to carry a box hearing aid around with him at cattle markets. Also because of his deafness, he paid for loud speaker systems in the cathedrals in Ennis and later in Cobh, and as a result the family always had the front pew, on the right facing the High Altar.

Leemont, in Rushbrooke, Cobh, was bought in August 1956, being originally intended for use in the winter months, but after another chest problem arose it was decided to give up the farming life entirely and Cragleigh was sold. As Irish taxes increased Michael investigated moving to the Isle of Man in 1963, but eventually remained in Cobh, where he died on 17 May 1973. Isabella died on 31 December 1975, in Tom’s house in Beckermet. Michael had erected a tombstone commemorating his parents in the nave of the 12^th Century Augustinian Abbey at Canon Island and intended being buried there himself. This privilege derived from his mother, Anne MacMahon, whose family claimed descent from Brian Boru and the Kings of Ireland. However, he was buried in Cobh, as were Isabella’s ashes.

Education

Michael’s son Tommy, had been a small thin child, while his younger brother Peter who took after the Robertson side of the family was larger and stockier. Tom’s schooling began in 1923 at the Infants School, Ocean Road, South Shields, before attending St Bede’s Central School, a Roman Catholic boy’s school, where he was in St Aidan’s House from 1929-1932. Some hymns were sung in Latin, but he was never taught the language, which in later life was a source of regret. Until 1929 he had a fairly gritty urban upbringing, opposite the railway station with a tram line running along Mile End Road, but he later wrote of happy memories of the numerous shops and trades in the area. He supplemented his meagre pocket money with making fretwork panels sold to a local furniture maker. The prosperity of Edwardian South Shields, reflected in the imposing town hall with bronze lamps supported by naked women was very different from the depressed conditions of the 1920s. He had a Geordie accent at school, but his Aunt Mary would pay him to speak properly at home. Mary was Isabella’s youngest sister, and after her marriage to Peter Monro failed, in 1928 she moved to live with the Tuohy family in South Shields with her two daughters, Margaret, later Winstanley (8.12.1924) and Cathie, later Griffin (25.11.1925). Tom later recalled his parents had been so preoccupied with their business that he had really been brought up by his Aunt Mary.

Tom earned a prize for swimming aged 9 and became very competitive, having shot up in size. From the age of 12 he was in football and cricket teams consistently, even beyond his time at university. At home he grew up with an 8 volume encyclopaedia, The Book of Knowledge, and his general knowledge was exceptional. But the entry on Athletics - Building brain and body by Athletics- he really took to heart. His enthusiasm for catching things became instinctive and endured, extending to catching a bride’s bouquet at a wedding in St Bees in the 1960s. In September 1932 he was sent to St Cuthbert’s RC Grammar School founded in 1881 at Benwell, Newcastle. As a day boy his first two terms involved a long return journey but he had 4 terms as a boarder, after his parents moved to Bournemouth for his father’s health in 1933. In his account of his time at St Cuthbert’s, written in 2003, he emphasized how important this was as he had to do his prep which had previously been neglected. He served as an altar boy in daily morning chapel, and his familiarity with the early saints of Northumberland was helped by school trips to Durham Cathedral and to Holy Island. A post card of Lindisfarne sent to his father describes birds’ eggs lying like stones and that he caught rabbits there. He went on to collect eggs, which remain with the family. The greatest influence on him was Father Vincent Duffy who was in charge of games and they kept in touch after Tom had left the school in July 1934. A card sent by Duffy in 1941, by which time Tom was married, refers to contemporaries who had vocations and that Tom had previously been seen as a suitable candidate for the priesthood.

Tom remained at St Cuthbert’s until July 1934, but his father had paid for his younger son Peter to go to the Municipal College in Bournemouth, and when Peter absconded, Tom was told to take his place. This appears to have been a curious hybrid commercial college, and the composition of the college cricket team in 1936, shows Tom and one other young man in a team of much older men. He matriculated in English, Elementary Maths, European History, French, and Chemistry in 1935, and in July passed the Intermediate Examination in Science in July 1936. These were with London University, and he had to go to London to sit the exams. In 1935 he went with a fellow student, Henry Arthur Valentine Davies, from Tredegar, who lived with his widowed mother in Bournemouth. The exams were in the Royal Horticultural Hall in Vincent Square, but they stayed in a guest house in Cromwell Road where they visited the museums, including the Imperial War Museum which was then in South Kensington. Henry joined the RAF, but was tragically killed, aged 20, while leading an aerobatic display at RAF Wittering in Lincolnshire on 15 December 1936. Tom wrote a moving account of this close friendship in 2003.

Tom then went to Reading University from 1936, first taking a general Science degree, which included Geography, then graduating in 1939 with a B.Sc.(2.2.) in Chemistry. Although his father was richer than the fathers of many of the other undergraduates, Tom had only a small allowance, and much of this was taken up with the expenses of playing football and cricket, in both cases for the 1^st eleven. His parents never came to watch him play, but kept framed team photographs. He kept his score cards and entered details in his University of Reading Student Union diary of 1937-38. The only non-sporting references are to Una Goodacre who visited for his 20th birthday, and again in February 1938. Una, daughter of Ralph Goodacre, a commodore with the Union-Castle Line, was the niece of Amy Goodacre, with whom Tom lodged at Ivy Dean, 53 Argyle Road, Reading. Tom and Una went on to be married in 1941 and his best man was H C Andrews who had been football captain at Reading, when Tom was vice captain. In July 1939 Tom applied for admission to Imperial College, surprisingly given his poor degree, but the War intervened. He applied for an army commission through the University Recruiting Board, but his appointment at Southampton was cancelled, as by then he had been appointed as temporary chemist in the Royal Ordnance Factory, Bishopston, Waltham Abbey. His first pay slip, for £21 per month is dated 31 October 1939, and in a letter from the Ministry of Labour in Tottenham, dated 15 November he was exempted from Army Service, as he was identified in the Schedule of Reserved Occupations. His address at the time was 4 Dumbarton Avenue, Waltham Cross. After his marriage he and Una lived in Chingford. Their son Michael was born in March 1942.

Career

From October 1939 until May 1943 Tom worked as a chemist at the Royal Gunpowder Factory, Waltham Abbey, in Essex, in a plant manufacturing cordite, a propellant used in cartridges for guns of all sizes. Cordite was made from a sensitive mixture of nitroglycerin and dry guncotton, and there were two explosions in the factory in 1940. To this mixture was added acetone and water, making a dough which was then baked and extruded in varying thicknesses to produce a dried rope-like product, which was sent off to Royal Ordnance Filling Factories, to be put into cartridges. Work went on in shifts during the ‘blitz’ from September 1940 until June 1941. Initially the workers went to air raid shelters when the air raid sirens sounded, but, as Tom, aged 22, explained to his fellow workers that our country was using up far more anti-aircraft ammunition than it was producing, and appealed to them to continue working when the sirens went off unless enemy aircraft was overhead. The factory was hit by high explosives and incendiaries several times and men were killed or injured, but fortunately there was no direct hit on a building containing explosives. Once, Tom dismantled an incendiary bomb that had landed, but not exploded, in one of the magazines containing tons of cordite, and he kept the aluminium bomb casing.

In March 1942 he was promoted, to group-chemist, reverted from shift work to day work, and became second in command of the cordite group. His superior was approaching retirement and allowed Tom to run the group. Within a few months their output had doubled, and the other groups, nitroglycerin and guncotton had no problem in supplying the ingredients required. In May 1943 he was selected by a retired efficiency expert called Espenhahn, who had previously worked for the deputy director of Ordnance, and before that with a Frenchman Charles Bedeaux, when he was developing Time and Motion Study, using stopwatches to assess the output of the workforce. Tom was trained in Time and Motion by Espenhahn, offered double his previous salary, and between June 1943 and March 1945 was sent to various Royal Ordnance Factories. Files refer to collecting information about acid plants in 12 factories, 5 in England, 4 in Scotland and 3 in Wales, including ROF Marchwiel, Wrexham, where he seems to have been based. In April 1945 he was promoted and moved to West Cumberland as Time and Motion Study Engineer in R.O.F factories at Drigg and Sellafield, where TNT was made, and at Bootle, which had been a shell filling factory but was now recovering metals from obsolete ammunition. From January to November 1946, as Production Manager at Bootle he was able to apply Time and Motion Study, and introduce an incentive scheme.

His first involvement with the atomic industry, later known as the nuclear industry, began in December 1946 when he was appointed Health Physics and Safety Manager at Springfields, near Preston. Previously a poison gas factory, this was now converted to produce uranium fuel elements destined for piles (reactors) to be built at Windscale, part of the former TNT factory at Sellafield. The most important part of this job was to ensure that the workforce was not exposed to any significant radiation from operations with uranium. From 1944 John Cockcroft (1897-1967; ODNB) had worked on building a heavy water reactor at Chalk River, the Anglo Canadian atomic research centre in Ontario, which already had experience of handling radioactive materials and Tom was sent there in 1947 to learn about their safety practices. While there he met the Italian physicist Enrico Fermi (1901-1954), who moved to the United States in 1938, and created the world’s first nuclear reactor in 1942 in Chicago.

In May 1949 Tom moved to Windscale, Sellafield, as Health Physics Manager, responsible for the changing rooms, laundry and fire brigade as well as radiation protection, similar but on a larger scale than at Springfields. He also organized a survey of the natural background radiation along the West Cumberland coast, and out to sea. In September 1949, Lord Adams of Ennerdale (1890-1960; DCB) formerly secretary of the Cumberland Development Council, suggested that an exhibition should be put on to prepare the local community with information about radioactivity and atomic energy, as they would have to live with and work with it. £2,000 was given for the design, building and presentation of the exhibition to be put together in 6 weeks. Together with Ivor Hopkins, Tom put on the exhibition in the Drill Hall Whitehaven for one week in November, attracting 8,000 visitors and national coverage, including an article in the Spectator. Tom wrote the explanatory information sheets distributed at the exhibition. This was the first time that Tom was able to demonstrate his ability to convey the complexities of the subject to the public in a way that they might understand.

Following his many absences for work, Tom was divorced from Una, who remarried, and on 27 August 1949, he was married to Lilian May Barnes (1924-1971) from Millom. They lived in Santon Way, Seascale and had two children, Kathleen 25.7.1950, and Thomas, born at 72 Santon Way on 3.9.1951.

In May 1950, Tom was appointed manager of piles and finishing at Windscale, responsible for the start-up and subsequent operation of the two atomic piles. He personally led the first power run on a British nuclear reactor, at Pile No.1 in December 1950, which was taken to full power in January 1951. He also set up a small-scale chemical process plant to manufacture polonium. The first plutonium produced by a British Pile was handled by Tom on March 28 1952; the small billet weighed 132 grams, the size of a half crown. This was taken to the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston in Berkshire, directed by William Penney (1909-1991; ODNB), to be used to make an atomic weapon which had to be ready for a test in October 1952. In June 1952 Tom had a call from Aldermaston which required more polonium urgently and as a new billet had just been produced, he was able to take this in his overnight case on the sleeper to London, and delivered it to Aldermaston the next morning. The first British atom bomb was tested at Trimouille, off the Montebello islands, Western Australia on schedule in 3 October 1952.

In December 1952 Tom was promoted as Works Manager at Springfields, the uranium fuel plant. He remained there until 1954 when he was sent, from May until July, on a residential course at th e Administrative Staff College at Henley-on-Thames, Berkshire, and then in August was appointed Works Manager at Windscale. In June 1957 he was promoted as Deputy General Manager of Windscale, the plutonium factory, and Calder Hall, the world’s first nuclear power station. This was opened officially by H.M. the Queen in 1956, who arrived by train at Sellafield Station. The serious Windscale Pile fire occurred in October 1957. The General Manager Henry Gethin Davey (1908-1960) former general manager of ROF Drigg, was in poor health and unable to deal with the fire personally, but was in regular contact with Tom by telephone. Davey was appointed Special Advisor to Sir Leonard Owen (1987-1971; ODNB) in September 1959.

Tom, who had been acting as General Manager, was officially appointed General Manager of Windscale and Calder Hall Works in October 1958 and remained in that position until August 1964. Although he received no official recognition for his role in the pile fire he was regarded locally as something of a celebrity, and his social circle in Cumberland was greatly expanded. The leading local industrialist, the Viennese Frank, later Baron, Schon (1912-1995; DCB) made a point of befriending Tom at Seascale Golf Course, where Tom regularly played with his colleague Tom Hughes, manager of the chemical plant at Windscale. Frank introduced Tom to many interesting people, including the future Prime Minister Harold Wilson. Tom introduced Frank to other people such as William Penney; they played golf together and had dinner at Seacroft, Frank’s house in St Bees. Tom joined the Whitehaven Harbour Board Commissioners, the West Cumberland Hospital Management Committee and the West Cumberland Productivity Council. He was a Governor of Whitehaven Technical College, and the first Chairman of the Governors of Wyndham School, a pioneering comprehensive School opened in Egremont in 1964. He had to resign from local commitments when his work took him to Risley at the end of that year, but he was instrumental in appointing two excellent deputy head teachers, Margaret Lorenz, a mathematician, and Dick Copland, a physicist. Tom was also in demand as a public speaker, and in October 1962, when his wife, Lilian, was presenting prizes at Overend School in Hensingham, he stressed the importance of reading, describing his youthful preference for school magazines, The Wizard and The Magnet, featuring Billy Bunter, rather than the novels of Scott or Dickens. More formally, on 21 May 1962, he proposed a vote of thanks to H.R.H. the Princess Royal, when she received purses on behalf of the Cumbrian branch of the YMCA, at the Whitehaven Technical College, and on 24 June 1963 he spoke at the inauguration of the Advanced Gas-Cooled reactor (AGR) by Lady Hailsham (1919-1978).

For a short period from 1958 until 1964, Tom and Lilian Tuohy had a hectic round of engagements in West Cumberland and also entertained at Ingleberg, the house they had bought in Beckermet in 1955. The visitors book at Ingleberg opens in May 1960 with entries by Sir Leonard Owen (1897-1971) and his wife. He was the civil engineer responsible for the initial projects of the Atomic programme. Sir John Cockcroft dined on 19 June 1962, having opened the College of Further Education in Whitehaven earlier that day. Lilian would entertain the wives of men visiting Sellafield, including Lady Penney, Lady Makins (later Sherfield), and Lady Cook. Many of the entries relate to ‘cocktail parties’ mostly involving gin or whisky, to which Sellafield managers and wives were invited, including Tom and Berenice Hughes, Huw and Olwen Howells, Donald and Meg Mackey and Tom and Sheila Marsham. A particularly memorable party was given on 23 March 1963, when émigré entrepreneurs: Bandi Vigodny (DCB) and his wife Norma Vigodny; Tomi de Gara (DCB) and his wife Bobbie; Frank Schon and his wife Trude; and Jo Meisner and his wife Jacqueline, all mingled with people Tom had met with his volunteer committee work. This group included Dick and Marian Bompass; John and Monica Simpson; and Gerald Grice and his sister Evelyn. Harold Wilson came for a drink on 17 March 1962 after playing golf in Seascale with Frank Schon, and Tom and Lilian met him again after he became Prime Minister. They were both invited to a reception at Lancaster House in London where Wilson introduced Tom to the President of Pakistan, Ayub Khan, who was shortly to visit Sellafield. Later parties were organized at Ingleberg for Japanese visitors to Sellafield in October 1967, October 1968, and June 1970, the last of such parties, with buffets provided by the Sellafield catering manager and staff. Tom and Lilian Tuohy featured in many press cuttings which were pasted into an album by Tom’s mother in Ireland.

In October 1958, when Tom was appointed General Manager at Sellafield, 5,000 people were employed on the site, and the number was expected to rise to 7000 within the next few years. But by restricting all recruitment, introducing bonus schemes, and sending shop stewards on courses in Time and Motion Study, together with natural wastage, the number of employees was reduced to 3,000, while output increased. He insisted on punctuality, putting up notices ‘Get up, get in or get out’, and, under all clocks, ‘Time is Money, Don’t Waste it’. He was appointed as a member of the production group on the board of directors in July 1959, and in August 1964 appointed Managing Director of the production group of the UKAEA. In addition to Windscale and Calder Works at Sellafield he was now in control of Chapelcross Nuclear Power Station, near Dumfries; Springfields Nuclear Fuel Plant, near Preston; and Capenhurst Uranium Isotope Separation Plant, near Chester. He applied his methods used at Sellafield to reduce the number of workers in the Production Group from 14,000 at its peak to about 9,000 when he left in 1973. He was based at the UKAEA head-quarters at Risley, near Warrington and rented a small flat in Culcheth nearby, but also had an office at UKAEA headquarters in London at King Charles II St off Haymarket. In 1967 he went to Russia on a scientific mission with William Penney (1909-1991), whose elevation to the peerage as Lord Penney in the Queen’s Birthday Honours was announced at a reception on 8 June at the British Embassy in Moscow. Later that year Tom went to Japan to sign the world’s first nuclear fuel reprocessing contract with the Japan Atomic Power Company (JAPCO), and visited Japan several times.

In 1969 he was appointed CBE. He had not been happy when in preference to him Dr Ned Franklin was appointed member for production. On 30 December 1968 Sir John Hill, UKAEA Chairman, wrote to him ‘I know you will not welcome this change. I hope however that you will not take it as any indication of lack of confidence in you as Managing Director of the Group. You are the best Managing Director the Group has ever had and I don’t exclude my own holding of the post. However the job of policy making, which is the job of Members, with all the negotiations in Whitehall and elsewhere is quite different and I have to put into that job the person who I think is best suited to it’. In his reply on 3 January 1969 Tom described this as ‘somewhat like an undeserved kick in the face… I have never played politics whilst serving the Authority, and have always said with honesty those things which I felt ought to be said in the National interest, even when I knew they would not be welcome to the ears of my superiors. I am well aware that this is not the way to seek preferment, but at least it has allowed me to live with my conscience’

Tom looked at careers outside the nuclear industry, and thanks to Harold Wilson was considered for the position of chairman of the Post Office. Tom recalled the final meeting held over lunch with the Postmaster General, John Stonehouse in the revolving restaurant at the top of the GPO Tower in November 1969. Tom also considered working for the ship builders Vosper Thorneycroft at Woolston, Southampton but his wife and family were not prepared to leave West Cumberland for the proffered charms of Bournemouth and the New Forest, of which Tom had fond memories.

In 1971 the Production Group of the UKAEA became the commercial enterprise British Nuclear Fuels Ltd, BNFL, and the UK shareholder in Urenco-Centec, a tripartite project with Holland and West Germany intended to develop and exploit new technology for enriching the fissile uranium content of nuclear fuel for reactors. Tom led the British team and was provided with accommodation and cars at Marlow and Bensberg, He resigned from BNFL to become Chief Executive of Urenco-Centec in 1973. According to the obituary by David Fishlock for The Independent on 26 March 2008: ‘His appointment solved problems for BNFL but was inappropriate for a situation that called for patient diplomacy. From the outset he left no one in doubt that he was going to bang heads together and force through radical changes. In 1974 Urenco produced its first business plan, looking 10 years ahead. But the forthright, decisive style of Tuohy’s direction was ill accepted by the fledgling company. While his ideas were forcing the partners to face up to their own weaknesses, Tuohy’s bluntness was alienating him from his shareholders. They proposed a new corporate structure which he saw as completely unacceptable because of the power it gave the shareholders over his decision making’. He resigned in October 1974, shortly before his 57^th birthday, and this was the end of his career in nuclear energy.

The remaining years of his life are of little public interest. He regretted missing the calls from the press over Chernobyl on 26 April 1986, but he could not be contacted as he was on a camping holiday in Europe. He was interviewed for a number of television programmes about the Pile fire and lived long enough to take part in the most useful account of the over hasty production of plutonium to meet political deadlines, and the diplomatic background to Macmillan’s shabby treatment of the Windscale Incident. Macmillan’s grandson, the 2^nd Lord Stockton (b.1943), later revealed a government cover up. Interviews were recorded in Beckermet, and in Newcastle, NSW, Australia, and towards the end of his life Tom was able to see this programme.

Personal Life and Travels

Tom had a Roman Catholic education, several of his contemporaries at St Cuthbert’s had vocations, and Father Duffy saw him as having sacerdotal potential. Tom insisted his first wife convert to Rome, but lost his faith at the time of his divorce. In later life he was agnostic, but able to talk about original sin and the catechism with greater knowledge than most Anglicans. In Ireland he would attend mass because his father was so disagreeable after his first refusal to go, but later in life, at any church service he would mutter, quite loudly that this was all a load of nonsense.

Tom’s first marriage was complicated by his long absences from Una, who moved back to Ivy Dean in Reading, where their first son, Michael went to school. A second son, Philip, was born on 15.6.1946. Una met another man, Bill Dawson, who had won an MC in Burma, was musical, and involved in retail stores. After a divorce Una and her new husband moved to Herne Bay in Kent and had a son, Anthony Dawson. Tom then married Lilian May Barnes (1924-1971) in Chorley on 1 August 1949. They met in 1946 when they were working at Bootle. Lilian was born in Queen St, Millom, her father Thomas James Barnes (1887-1943) was from Ulpha, and described as a slate quarryman when he married Edith Eleanor Leyland (1890-1982) who had grown up in Kentmere. Lilian was attractive in appearance and personality and was a good dancer. Having grown up in a loving family, the middle child among seven siblings, she could relate to other people. By making everyone feel welcome she evolved as a useful social foil to Tom, who admitted he had no ‘small talk’. Tom and Lilian lived in Santon Way, Seascale, and had two children: Kathleen (Kate) born on 25 July 1950 in Whitehaven Hospital, and Thomas (Tommy) born at 72 Santon Way, Seascale on 3 September 1951. Lilian died tragically young of cancer aged 47 in 1971.

Tom’s children of the second marriage knew nothing of the first marriage until late adolescence, but were introduced, after the death of their mother, to their half- brothers. Tom’s second family lived in houses built for UKAEA, known as Authority houses, in Seascale and Clifton, near Springfields, but in May 1955 Tom bought Ingleberg, in Beckermet, built in 1900 by a farmer John Robley (1833-1902), with money inherited from an uncle in Manchester. He married Elisabeth Smith (1860-1934) who inherited farms and land in Beckermet, and, when the Tuohy family moved in, the house was on the edge of the village, surrounded by open fields with views to the Irish Sea, to the Cumbrian fells with a good view of Scafell Pike and Scafell, and to the cooling towers of Windscale and Calder Hall – normally referred to as the Works – about a mile to the south. It was from this house that Tom set off to deal with the pile fire in 1957. Mollie Robley (1901-2003) was born in the house. She married Major General Sir John Ponsonby (1866-1962), son of Queen Victoria’s private secretary, and moved to Haile Hall. She also inherited land from her mother which was sold for housing from the 1960 onwards. Together with Ingleberg, the property included a substantial stone bank barn and a strip of land which originally had a tennis court, dug up as a kitchen garden by the Robleys during two world wars. Tom used the barn to keep 600 chickens in deep litter. Planning to expand, with the help of his brother-in-law Eric Barnes, he used scaffolding planks from the Sellafield site, to create an extra storey within the barn. Most of the poultry work was done by his wife, Lilian, but the project was abandoned after battery egg farming resulted in the collapse of the price of eggs. Tom also grew sweet corn, and tomatoes, under cloches, ‘over the road’, a hortus conclusus, with high hedges and trees to provide shelter from the sea winds. Social life in Beckermet revolved around Croft Lodge, the home of the family of Tomi de Gara and for some years Tomi paid for a gardener to cultivate the kitchen garden, with both families sharing the crops.

Tom was insatiably self-educating, read extensively and accumulated a large number of books, but spent a large amount of time watching sport on television. He had great energy and stamina for travel. Apart from visiting his grandfather on Inishloe in 1928, he had no foreign travel experience until after the war, when work took him to Canada, and to Wuppertal in Germany. A conference in Geneva in 1958, which he attended with Lilian, was the first time they drove and camped in Europe. They had another visit to Italy in May 1961. The family visited Tom’s parents in Ireland annually from 1955 until 1970, and from 1963-1970 they would also embark on intensive and extensive European travels, the furthest, in 1967, taking in Greece and European Turkey, with a foray into Asia Minor. This was no holiday for Lilian as she had to do all the cooking and camp would often be struck at 5.30 am, but it was a real education for the children.

Tom travelled frequently when he was working, attending World Energy Conferences, which offered study tours afterwards, and he travelled even more extensively in retirement. He also took to cruising. In May 1984 Tom met an American woman Shirley de Bernardo (1938-2006) on the Trans-Siberian Express, a Jules Verne tour, and they both continued on another tour around China. They went on tours of India together in 1985, and after a few years he divided his time between suburban Camarillo, north of Los Angeles, California, and Beckermet. They undertook many camping adventures in America and Europe, and they eventually married in Whitehaven in October 2004. The witnesses were Tom’s cousins Margaret and Cathie. Tom left England for the last time in December 2005, expecting to continue take up residence in Beckermet in the summer months, but Shirley died of cancer in August 2006. Kate Tuohy Main assisted towards the end of her illness and then Tom went to live with Kate in Newcastle, NSW Australia, together with her husband Ron, and daughter Lilian. He was pleased to have lived to the age of 90 and died peacefully on 12 March 2008. His ashes were scattered from the top of the screes above Wastwater, which can be seen from the drawing room in Ingleberg.

Sources

N.B. The Sellafield site was officially known as Windscale Works from 1947-1956, then Windscale and Calder Works from 1956-1971. In 1971 the site evolved into BNFL Windscale and Calder Works and in 1981 Windscale solely fell under the auspices of UKAEA. In 1981 this left the BNFL site to be named Sellafield to distinguish it from Windscale.
Lorna Arnold, Windscale 1957: Anatomy of a Nuclear Accident, London, 1992
Sarah Aspinall, Windscale, Britain’s Biggest Nuclear Disaster, BBC2 Documentary, 2007
Dirk Banninck, URENCO 1970-2020: From Treaty of Almelo to Atom Austeig, Laka Foundation, Nuclear Monitor 889, 2020
Census of 1855 provided from Co Clare Heritage Centre by Brenda Kenerk Dave, cousin of TT
Correspondence with TT in the Owen archive at Liverpool University
Dinner at the Savoy with John Rix of Vosper Ltd, 13 December 1967
James Forrester, ‘Atomic Slight of Hand’, The Spectator, 16 January 1949
Sir John Hill, British Nuclear Fuels Ltd, takes over UKAEA, BNFL brochure 1971
Letters from TT to his parents 26 June 1966 and 26 November 1966
Letters exchanged 30 December 1968 – 3 January 1969
Letter to John Stonehouse, Postmaster General, 13 January 1969
Lunch at the RAC Club with John Stonehouse, 9 January 1969 and again at the Post Office Tower, 19 November 1969
MacMahons: https://clarelibrary.ie/eolas/coclare/genealogy/macmahon_family.htm
Ministry of Supply, An Exhibition of Atomic Energy, Drill Hall, Whitehaven, 5-12 November 1949
Obituaries of Thomas Tuohy: David Fishlock, The Independent, 26 March 2008; The Daily Telegraph, 26 March 2008; David Lowry, The Guardian, 7 May 2008; Whitehaven News, 27 March 2008; News and Star, 8 May 2008
Polonium-210 produces alpha particles, which on hitting beryllium cause neutrons to be generated, providing a trigger for an atomic bomb. Polonium-210 is extremely toxic and Alexander Litvinenko is thought to have been poisoned by 1 millionth of a gramme.
With thanks also to Brenda Kenerk Dave, Christopher and Kim Butt, Samantha Wyndham and Martin Breen for Irish information, and to Kate Tuohy Main

CUMBRIAN LIVESTowards a Dictionary of Cumbrian Biography