Peter Tom was born in 1895 in Freetown, Sierra Leone, then a part of the British Empire. He had left his home country at an early age to look for work in Europe. In the summer of 1914, aged eighteen, Peter Tom lived in Paris and worked as a waiter. When World War I broke out in July that year, Peter Tom was immediately drafted into the French army, despite not being a French national. After only a few months on the Western Front, Peter Tom was captured by the Germans and sent to a prisoner of war camp in Germany. By September 1917, Peter Tom managed to escape from the war camp and, unseen, boarded a German steamship in the port of Stettin where he hid in the hold. The next time the steamship docked, he found himself in Gävle. Peter Tom snuck ashore and worked for a few weeks at a sawmill before heading south. Once in Stockholm, he seems to have found a room to rent but had difficulty finding a steady job.
Following the incident at the cemetery, Peter Tom denied the alleged bicycle theft. His version of the story stated that he was investigating whether a British Consul in Stockholm could assist him with his return journey home. In Humlegården Park, he'd met a man he did not previously know. The man had called out 'in some strange Swedish-English gobbledygook' - 'Hello black man! Come here and carry my bike home!' - at which point Tom took the bike, and the man promptly disappeared. He had not known what to do. Peter Tom spoke several languages (according to the Police Report, at least English, Italian, Spanish, and German) but hardly a word of Swedish. Hence, he did not want to go to the police himself. Instead, he decided to drag the bike home, hoping that his landlady would help him.
However, according to other sources, Peter Tom had tried to sell the bicycle to a pawnbroker in Jungfrugatan. The pawnbroker said he recognized Peter Tom and, in particular, the mark on his forehead (probably a scar from his time as a prisoner of war in Germany, Svenska Dagbladet wrote). He was sure of it, but Peter Tom continued to deny that he had ever been to the pawnbrokers. The trial results were a few months in prison and deportation to Sierra Leone. But since the war was still raging in Europe, Peter Tom had to wait over a year before he could leave the country. It was not until Saturday, 7 June 1919, that he could board the steamship Torsten in Gothenburg and make his way home to Freetown via Newcastle. He was still a young man, and who knows, maybe he had a long life ahead of him.
Sources
Information about Peter Tom sourced from http://tidningar.kb.se
Additional information relating to the deportation of Peter Tom, including a photograph of him, can be found in 'Polisunderrättelser: under inseende af Stockholms polisstyrelse utgifna för rickets polismyndigheter' (Police Reports: Issued to the National Police Authorities under the supervision of the Stockholm Police Board) from 1919.