Willie attended the Diocesan Boys School (1909-1916), and graduated from the University of Hong Kong (BA 1920).
While studying in London, he lived modestly in digs at 2 Holford Road in Hampstead, and integrated into British society with such fervour that, on returning to Hong Kong in 1926 with his impeccable English, he was regarded by the locals as an authority on anything English in the way of custom, etiquette, dress and language for rest of his life.
He was welcome back by the British administration after the war, and was appointed a magistrate at the Central Magistracy in 1947, heralding a first for an ethnic Chinese.
Jessie was a daughter of Dr.To Ying-kwan (杜應坤), and a grand-daughter of the famous Dr.To Dao-ming (杜道明) an overseas Chinese missionary doctor of western medicine in Guangzhou in the 1880s, who had fled to Hong Kong, in order to avoid an imperial edict that he should serve the imperial family at the Forbidden City.
Life for Thomas Tam and his family after the war was much more modest, and the income from his job as a magistrate supplemented the education of his children in England in the wake of the instability in Hong Kong as a result of the political upheaval across the border in 1949.
His son, William (1939), was an architect in Britain before relocating to Hong Kong in 1976 to revive family assets.
The Jessie and Thomas Tam Charitable Foundation (established in 1986) has made significant donations to worthwhile causes including HK$5 million to the Hong Kong Cancer Society,[1] £1 million for the 2012 NHS project, "Inflammatory Bowel Disease Registries in the United Kingdom and Hong Kong.