Dick Humphreys
died in Sept 1968, still running his small
tyre and motor accessories business in
36 Pearse St
at the end.
The family held on to the premises, but no one took over
the business, which was very quiet at the end.
In May 1971, Mike Dover, a student in TCD at the time
and a motor enthusiast, came upon the premises at 36 Pearse St (opposite TCD)
being cleared out by the builders. He went in and talked to them
and asked if he could look around.
The "wicker work" myth:
Dover found two Edwardian-style wickerwork basket seats with leather
upholstery around the edges. It is unclear what these were.
These would never have been used
on a car as late as the 1920s. Whatever Dick was doing with them,
no doubt they were nothing to do with the Thomond.
Dover also found,
scattered round the floor, bits of Thomond letterheads,
all identical, and all torn.
He could more or less piece together a complete one.
And either he or Michael Sedgwick pieced it together as:
"Specialists in all kinds of wicker work".
In fact, what it actually said
was:
"Specialists in all kinds of machine work".
Presumably there was a rip though the word 'machine'
and they connected the seats with the Thomond
and made a guess.
"Specialists in all kinds of wicker work"
is what
got printed in Veteran and Vintage magazine.
Of all the people I have spoken to who have seen and worked
on Thomonds, not one remembers any wickerwork.
Indeed it became a running joke in my family as I carried out
my research.
Sedgwick also mis-spelled Mike's surname as 'Dove' which made him hard to track down.
I spent a year searching for the elusive 'Mike Dove'
before I met Kieran White
and he told me "Dover! That's the one!"
Despite the confusion,
Dover's discovery and the Sedgwick article did introduce a photograph of the Thomond
to motoring historians, who previously had no known picture.
(Dick's 'Motoring Life' article having gone unnoticed by a wider audience.)
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