Captain Tom Moore

Captain Sir Thomas Moore (30 April 1920 – 2 February 2021), more popularly known as Captain Tom, was a British Army officer and fundraiser. He made international headlines in April 2020 when he raised money for charity in the run-up to his 100th birthday during the COVID-19 pandemic. He served in India and the Burma campaign during the Second World War, and later became an instructor in armoured warfare. After the war, he worked as managing director of a concrete company and was an avid motorcycle racer.

On 6 April 2020, at the age of 99 during the first COVID-19 national lockdown, Moore began to walk 100 lengths of his garden in aid of NHS Charities Together, with the goal of raising £1,000 by his 100th birthday on 30 April. In the 24-day course of his fundraising, he made many media appearances and became a household name in the UK, earning a number of accolades and attracting over 1.5 million individual donations.

In recognition of his efforts, he received the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Helen Rollason Award at the 2020 ceremony. He performed in a cover version of the song "You'll Never Walk Alone" sung by Michael Ball, with proceeds going to the same charity. The single topped the UK singles chart, making him the oldest person to achieve a UK number one.

On the morning of Moore's 100th birthday, the total raised by his walk passed £30 million, and by the time the campaign closed at the end of that day, had increased to over £32.79 million (worth almost £39 million with expected tax rebates). His birthday was marked in a number of ways, including flypasts by the Royal Air Force and the British Army. He received over 150,000 cards, and was appointed as honorary colonel of the Army Foundation College. On 17 July 2020, he was personally knighted by Queen Elizabeth II at Windsor Castle. He died on 2 February 2021 aged 100, at Bedford Hospital, where he was taken after being treated for pneumonia, later testing positive for COVID-19.

Early life and education

Moore was born in Keighley, West Riding of Yorkshire, England, on 30 April 1920, and grew up in the town. He was the son of Isabella (née Hird) and Wilson "Wilfred" Moore. His father was from a family of builders, and his mother was a head teacher. Moore was educated at Keighley Grammar School and started an apprenticeship in civil engineering.

Moore raced motorcycles competitively – he acquired his first when he was twelve and wore the number 23. He rode a Scott Flying Squirrel motorcycle, winning several trophies. Moore was a member of the Keighley and District Photographic Association between 1934 and 1936, as his father had also been.

Military service

Moore was conscripted in the 8th Battalion, Duke of Wellington's Regiment (8 DWR) in June 1940, stationed at Weston Park in Otley, nine months after the beginning of the Second World War. He was selected for officer training later that year, and attended an Officer Cadet Training Unit before being commissioned as a second lieutenant on 28 June 1941.

On 22 October 1941, Moore became a member of the Royal Armoured Corps. This was because 8 DWR became an armoured unit designated as the 145th Regiment Royal Armoured Corps. Later that year, he was transferred to the 9th Battalion (9 DWR) in India, which had converted to become the 146th Regiment Royal Armoured Corps. While in India, he was tasked with setting up and running a training programme for army motorcyclists. He was initially posted to Bombay (now Mumbai) and subsequently to Calcutta (now Kolkata).

He was promoted to war-substantive lieutenant on 1 October 1942 and to temporary captain on 11 October 1944.

As part of the Fourteenth Army, the so-called "Forgotten Army", he served in Arakan in western Burma (now Myanmar) – where he survived dengue fever. Moore returned to the UK in February 1945, to take a training course on the inner workings of the Churchill tanks, learning to become an instructor. He did not return to the regiment, remaining as an instructor and the Technical Adjutant of the Armoured Vehicle Fighting School in Bovington Camp, Dorset until the end of the War. He was demobilised in 1946.

For 65 years, Moore organised the annual reunion for the 9th Battalion veterans.

Career

Moore was officially demobilised in October 1946. After leaving the army at 26 years old, he joined the family building company, the name of which was altered to W. Moore & Son (Builders) Ltd. In 1960 he took a job as a travelling salesman for a roofing materials company called Nuralite in Gravesend, Kent. Seven years later he became regional manager, for the north of England and Northern Ireland, for the company.

He was later appointed general manager of Cawoods Concrete Products Ltd., manufacturing concrete pipes in March, Cambridgeshire, with a view to restoring it to profitability or closing it down, after its owners had failed to find a buyer. Moore led a management buyout in 1983, with the assistance of local Member of Parliament Clement Freud, who also became an investor in the renamed March Concrete Products Ltd. The company traded successfully for several years until market conditions and technical issues forced the investors to sell it to Amalgamated Roadstone Corporation in 1987.

100th birthday walk

On 6 April 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, and with his 100th birthday approaching, Moore began a fundraising campaign for NHS Charities Together, a group of charities supporting staff, volunteers and patients in the British National Health Service (NHS). He aimed to complete one hundred 25-metre (27-yard) laps of his garden, ten laps per day, with the help of a walking frame, branding the endeavour "Tom's 100th Birthday Walk for the NHS".

The initial £1,000 goal having been realised on 10 April, the target was increased, first to £5,000, and later to £500,000 as more people around the world became involved. Contributions rose quickly after British media publicised the endeavour, beginning when Moore made a brief appearance by telephone, on Michael Ball's Sunday programme on BBC Radio 2 on 12 April. Moore, who joined Twitter in the same month, used the site to express joy at the public's generosity in donating such a large amount of money.

He achieved his target of one hundred laps on the morning of 16 April, watched at a safe distance by a guard of honour from the 1st Battalion of the Yorkshire Regiment, the regiment into which the DWR were merged in 2006. He said he would not stop, and aimed to do a second hundred.

On the morning of his 100th birthday, he had raised £30 million. The JustGiving page for his campaign closed at the end of that day; the final amount raised subsequently being stated there as £32,796,475 (plus another £6,173,663.31 expected in tax rebates under the Gift Aid scheme) – a record for a JustGiving campaign, beating the previous record of £5.2 million raised (partially posthumously) by Stephen Sutton. More than 1.5 million individuals donated.

Funds raised by Moore were spent on such things as well-being packs for National Health Service staff, facilitating rest and recuperation rooms, devices to enable hospital patients to keep in contact with family members, and community groups who support patients once discharged from hospitals. Once his campaign ended, Moore encouraged people to continue to donate, directly to the NHS Charities Together's urgent appeal, and subsequently via his own Captain Tom Foundation.

On reaching £5 million, Moore explained his motivation:

When we started off with this exercise we didn't anticipate we'd get anything near that sort of money. It's really amazing. All of them, from top to bottom, in the National Health Service, they deserve everything that we can possibly put in their place. They're all so brave. Because every morning or every night they're putting themselves into harm's way, and I think you've got to give them full marks for that effort. We're a little bit like having a war at the moment. But the doctors and the nurses, they're all on the front line, and all of us behind, we've got to supply them and keep them going with everything that they need, so that they can do their jobs even better than they're doing now.

Number-one single

To mark Moore's 100th length, the singer Michael Ball sang "You'll Never Walk Alone" for him live on BBC Breakfast. Within 24 hours, the performance was made into a digital single featuring the NHS Voices of Care Choir, and Moore's spoken words. Released by Decca Records, on 17 April, with all proceeds going to NHS Charities Together, the recording topped the United Kingdom's "The Official Big Top 40" chart. It sold almost 36,000 copies in its first 48 hours, and was the "biggest trending song" as measured by the Official Charts Company. On 24 April, it went straight to number 1 in the UK Singles Chart, making Moore the oldest person to achieve that position and meaning that he was at number 1 on his 100th birthday, and became a one-hit wonder.

Moore's bid to reach number 1 was boosted when his leading competitor, the then-current number 1 act The Weeknd, asked people via Twitter to support Moore and make him number 1 for his 100th birthday. The Weeknd's song, "Blinding Lights", duly dropped to number 2.