Wood engraver, teacher and painter born in Jamaica. Tom moved to London and was trained at the Grosvenor School by Iain Macnab and William Kermode, 1930-33.
His career as a wood engraver, although cut short by World War II, was distinguished and he was highly thought of by his contemporaries such as Macnab and Guy Malet.
From 1932 he was a teacher at Westminster School of Art where his colleagues included Clifford Webb and Blair Hughes-Stanton, among others. Together they formed a very advanced department under Kirkland Jamieson, being the first London Council School to teach abstract art. In the early 1930s, Chadwick visited Spain and produced a numb of engravings of Catalan landscapes and peasants.
He exhibited at the SWE and in 1936 won a prize and medal at the Chicago International Exhibition for his print ‘The Introduction’. He exhibited at the Redfern Gallery, NEAC, RA, ROI, GI and RBA.
British forces had been stationed in Egypt since the 19th Century, defending Britain’s interests in the Suez Canal which linked Britain to her eastern Empire. The Royal Navy’s Mediterranean Fleet was stationed at Alexandria while a standing garrison of British troops which included the Mobile Division (Egypt), one of only two armoured formations possessed by Britain at the beginning of the Second World War, guarded against invasion.
Two members of this armoured force renamed the 7th Armoured Division in February 1940, were Captains Hector and Tom Chadwick of the 3rd King’s Own Hussars, Royal Armoured Corps. Both brothers had been born in Jamaica the sons of an English clergyman Rev Thomas Lionel Chadwick and his wife Beryl.
The family moved to Gloucester, England, and Hector and Tom joined the British Army.
The two served in North Africa, taking part in both the First and Second Battles of El Alamein. On the afternoon of 25 October Hector was killed by German shelling as his tank was passing through a gap in one of the minefields. The death of his brother affected Tom deeply and two days later, during a lull in the battle, he set out in a scout car to find his brother’s grave and make sure that it was marked with a cross.
He was accompanied by his friends Captain Peter Elford, also of the 3rd Hussars, and Captain Daniel McCarthy, of the Royal Army Medical Corps. But all three were killed when their scout car was hit by German 88mm shell fire.
