It is given to few people after a life of decent and unremarkable obscurity to be catapulted to worldwide fame in the three weeks before their 100th birthday, but that is what happened to Tom Moore. Universally known as Captain Tom because of his former rank in the British army, Moore achieved celebrity by deciding to walk round the garden at his daughter’s Bedfordshire home 100 times in the weeks leading up to his centenary in order to raise what he hoped would be £1,000 to help NHS staff during the Covid-19 pandemic in April last year.
The modest aim of the daily walks, which began on 6 April, was quickly exceeded and the target was adjusted first to £5,000 then £500,000. As images of the old soldier, who has died aged 100, dressed in his blazer, wearing his medals, leaning on a wheeled walking frame, making 10 25-metre laps of the garden each day, were broadcast first nationally, then internationally, the money kept rolling in, soon at the rate of several million pounds a day.
His daughter Hannah Ingram-Moore told reporters: “He’s a stoic Yorkshireman, an unruffled, straight down the line kind of person and has embraced this adventure as the next stage in his life. What the British public and everyone who’s supported him is giving him is his next purpose.”
Wider public interest was spurred by an appearance on the singer Michael Ball’s Radio 2 Sunday programme, followed by national newspaper coverage, then reports on outlets from Paris to Jakarta. A correspondent for the Times of India reported that the amount raised had increased by £2m during the time it took him to drive back to London after interviewing Moore. The attraction of one very elderly man’s quiet fortitude at a time of a national lockdown emergency, coinciding with the 75th anniversary of VE Day in the second world war, in which he had served, struck a resonant chord.
Soon Ball and Moore had completed a rendition of You’ll Never Walk Alone that rocketed to No 1 in the UK charts, making Moore the oldest person to achieve that feat. There were messages of support from celebrities, sportspeople and politicians, including the prime minister, Boris Johnson, and an honour guard by troops from the Yorkshire Regiment – successors to his former battalion.
The 100 laps were completed on 16 April, by which time the total had reached £3m, and on his birthday a fortnight later the figure totalled an astonishing £32.8m, with a further £6m to come from Gift Aid reimbursements. There were 1.5m donations from 53 countries.
On his birthday there was a fly-past above his home by the RAF and by a Hurricane and Spitfire from the Battle of Britain squadron; there was also an announcement that he was to be promoted to honorary colonel of the Army Foundation College in Harrogate, a personal message from the Queen, as opposed to the normal printed birthday card, and, in July 2020, a knighthood, carried out by the Queen in a one-off open-air ceremony in the quadrangle at Windsor – her first official appearance following the start of the conronavirus lockdown.
Buses, a train, a police puppy, a foal and a Clydesdale horse were named in his honour as was a powerboat for the Northamptonshire fire and rescue service. Prompted by an eight year-old child in Port Talbot, 150,000 people sent him birthday cards: 20 volunteers were assigned to opening them and they filled a local school hall. An autobiography, Tomorrow Will Be a Good Day, followed in the autumn of 2020 and a film of his life was promised.
Such an onset of celebrity might have overwhelmed a lesser man, but Moore remained admirably calm: “When we started we didn’t anticipate we’d get anything near that sort of money,” he told the media. “It is really amazing. All of them, from top to bottom in the NHS, deserve everything we can possibly put in the place. They are all so brave because every morning, or every night, they are putting themselves in harm’s way. We have got to support and keep them going with everything they need, so they can do their jobs even better.”
Moore was born and raised in Keighley, West Yorkshire, the son of Wilfred, who worked for the family’s building firm, and his wife, Isabella (nee Hird), who was a primary school headteacher. Wilfred’s early ambition to work as a professional photographer proved impossible when he became deaf following a virus infection as a young man – a disability that, as his son wryly pointed out in his autobiography, at least prevented him from enlisting in the first world war and thus kept his father safe from harm.
Moore was educated at Keighley boys’ grammar school and then became an apprentice civil engineer. When the second world war broke out he was called up into the 8th battalion of the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment and selected for officer training. The battalion was subsumed into the Royal Armoured Corps, and he served on tanks and was stationed in India. A temporary captain in the latter stages of the war, Moore was assigned to run a training programme for army motorcyclists and later served in Burma and Sumatra.
After the war he was stationed as an instructor at the armoured vehicles school of fighting at Bovington Camp in Dorset before returning to civilian life as a salesman for a roofing materials company in Yorkshire. He became the managing director of a concrete products company, organising a management buyout in 1983 before it was sold to the ARC conglomerate four years later. Hitherto, his only brush with fame had been an appearance on the BBC television quiz show Blankety Blank on Christmas Day 1983.
Moore was a motorcycle enthusiast from his youth, racing competitively for many years, and he organised annual regimental reunions for 64 years “until there was no one left but me”. He had lived with Hannah and her family in the village of Marston Moretaine since 2008.
His admiration for the NHS had been enhanced by treatment for skin cancer, knee replacements and a broken hip caused by a fall in his kitchen in 2018. Colin Ingram, his son-in-law, told the Daily Mirror about the walk: “It was something in the garden to keep him walking to help his recovery from his hip operation. We said we’d give a pound a lap – thank goodness I didn’t say I’d match any money he raised.”
After an unhappy first marriage, Moore married Pamela Paull, who was the head office manager of the concrete company where he worked, in 1968. She died in 2006. He is survived by their daughters, Hannah and Lucy.
