John Thomson
Famed for being one of the youngest goalkeepers ever to pull on a Scotland jersey, in fact four times before the age of twenty-two, John Thomson will forever be remember for the tragic circumstances of his death, if not on the pitch at Ibrox, then not long after being carried from it.
In fact Thomson was not the archetypal 'keeper. He was slender and stood only five feet nine tall but he had a leap in him, was a shot-stopper and brave. And they were qualities that had led to him at seventeen to be signed by Celtic from local Fife football, starting in the first team at eighteen and being first-choice, including for the Cup Final victories of 1927 and 1931.
John Thomson was born a Fifer, actually in Kirkcaldy. But his father, a Colliery Foreman, was from Edinburgh, his mother from Carnwath with the family moving with work but by 1911 settling in Bowhill, between Cardenden and Auchterderran and a mining village where the streets were numbered not named. The Thomsons would stay on both 14th and 17th. John himself would start work down the pit at fourteen, that is before football gave him a glimpse of what should have been a long and successful life elsewhere.
But it was not to be. At twenty-two John Thomson was during play first rendered accidently unconscious from the impact of knee against his head. Then he was then some five hours later pronounced dead at the Victoria Infirmary, not far where he was staying at the time in Glasgow's Southern Suburbs.
Nor would he marry, despite at the time being engaged to Margaret Finlay. Instead his body was be carried back to Bowhill to be buried in the cemetery there with a huge crowd in attendance and a memorial paid for by public subscription on a grave that even today is pristine.
Birth Locator:
1909 - 74, Balfour St., Kirkcaldy, Fife
Residence Locations:
1911 - 10, Fourteenth St., Auchterderran, Fife
1921 - 28, Seventeenth St., Auchterderran, Fife
1931 - 481, Victoria Road, Glasgow
Death Locator:
1931 - Victoria Infirmary, Glasgow
Grave Locator:
Bowhill Cemetery, Auchterderran, Fife
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