After training at the Royal Military College, English joined the Bedfordshire Regiment, and was appointed Second Lieutenant in September 1887.
He engaged in correspondence with Arthur William Hill, Assistant Director, and Sir David Prain, Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew about plant collecting, and sent them specimens of various seeds and wild plants from Grand Cayman, either for the Kew Herbarium, or for further identification.
During the 1920's Thomas English transcribed a number of documents that he found in the Court House in Plymouth, and used them to tell the history of Montserrat.
[15] He describes English as 'rather elderly with a bushy white beard', living in a 'little wooden house with burlap walls, dirt floor etc., just opposite the Botanic Gardens'.
[16][17] In the 1930's, English's work played an important role in discussions around the volcanic nature of the Soufrière Hills, after a series of damaging earthquakes struck the island.
[20] Perret describes Thomas English as an 'amateur scientist', but notes that he carefully recorded the timings of earthquake shocks on the island of Montserrat at the start of the seismic crisis in 1934.
English's interpretation was validated many years later, when the volcanic eruption of the Soufrière Hills Volcano began in July 1995, within the crater that he had described, and which was named for him.