Thomas produced his book to help finance his considerable research costs. It is very comprehensive and breaks the family down into branches that have a very large number of people listed. It has to be said that some in the family apparently wanted nothing to do with him, so there is not much said about certain branches. However, others were much more helpful. Therefore the coverage can be somewhat variable and there are a number of omissions and a few mistakes, but the work was a major achievement given the circumstances of the day. In his preface to the book, Thomas says that his interest started in 1945 when he began to wonder where his ancestors had lived in England before they emigrated to Canada around 1859. The trail led him back to Suffolk, in particular a small village called Otley, near Ipswich. Thomas was also the author of another genealogy book 'The Watson Family' published in 1965, although no public copy of that book has been found so far.

The book was entitled 'The Rattle Families' and subtitled '(including those with the surname Ratel, Rattel and Ratelle) Genealogy and History - Of interest to every living descendent and their posterity' and ran to 153 pages. It was clearly a 'work in progress' and was finally published by Thomas in Toronto in 1968. At that time he was living at 2567 Lakeshore Boulevard West in Toronto. The book details the family branches in the following order; Suffolk (pages 2-59), Somerset (pages 60-101), Yorkshire (pages 102-114), London (pages 115-128), Quebec (pages 129-134), France (pages 135-140) and Franconia (pages 141-144).

A number of copies of The Rattle Families are known to be in private ownership. Publicly accessible copies are at the following Canadian locations; McMaster University in Hamilton, the University of Ottawa and the University of Ontario. In England copies of the the book can be found can be found in the London Guildhall Library, the library of the Society of Genealogists (London) and the Suffolk Record Office (Ipswich). Copies in the United States are at; Allen County Library (Fort Wayne), the Detroit Public Library, the Library of Congress (Washington), the Library of Michigan, New York Historical Society, the New York Library, the Newberry Library (Chicago), Seattle Library and the Wisconsin Historical Society. In Australia a copy may be found in the state libraries of Queensland (Brisbane) and Victoria (Melbourne).