Don Stonehouse wrote the following account of Thomas as an email to the B-B group, 19 June 2018:
Jim Thomas, who lived in Carnforth, Lancs. sadly, passed away last weekend after a long illness. He is survived by his wife Maureen. I met Jim through my membership of the Raven Natural History and Entomological Society, which sadly folded a couple of years ago. At ~ 60 I was one of the youngest members. In 2006 a group of us - Tom Eccles and then partner Carole, Stan and Marion Bowestead, Jim and Maureen, Chris Rayden and his mum and dad - spent an entomological week in Bussac, France and blitzed the local pinewoods, a freshly dead boar, stacked logs etc. Jim and I went hunting around the junction of the Rivers Dordogne and Vezere and I remember taking a Paederidus that was running about in abundance on the sandy river bank - it's been extinct in the UK for over 100 years.Jim was very good company with a straightforward and affable nature. He was also very fit and would take people up into the hills when he was over 70.
Within the last 10 years Jim was involved in the production of a number of checklists -The Coleoptera of Drigg Dunes - Oct 2011; The Coleoptera of Gait Barrows NNR - Feb 2012; The Coleoptera of the Witherslack Area of Cumbria with Stan Bowestead, Tom Eccles and Chris Rayden - 2014, the last publication of the Raven Society; and The Coleoptera of the Sandhills of South Lancashire with Tom Eccles and Stan Bowestead - 2016, published by Pemberley Books. He was a subscriber to the Coleopterist from 2006. (PH 7/18/ MD 7/18, 2/20)