Mansfield Reporter 06/06/1919
Peter Bradshaw has submitted the following:-
William John Frow was born in Gainsborough on 21st November 1898. His father Henry (b.1870) married Rhoda Wood (b.1868) in Gainsborough in 1898. His mother died in 1900 and is buried in the General Cemetery. In 1901 Henry and William were living at 47 Lea Road and Henry was listed as a widower. Henry worked as an Insurance Agent.
Henry remarried at Coningsby in October 1901 and had four more children.
By 1911 William was living with his grandparents at Southwell, Nottinghamshire, he is listed as "John William Wood."
William's Service Records have survived and show that he enlisted at Mansfield on 29th November 1916 aged 17 years 338 days. He joined the Durham Light Infantry, Service Number 80190. His occupation was a Grocer's Assistant. His father’s address in listed as Hulme, Manchester. His records list that he had a brother Horace and sisters Marjorie, Olive and Winifred.
He went to France on 31st March 1918 and he was reported missing on 27th May 1918 and became a prisoner of war. He died in Germany in Langensalza Prisoner of War Hospital from War Dropsy and Exhaustion on 23rd October 1918. Conditions at Langensalza were very bad and discipline was brutal.
He was awarded the British War Medal and Victory Medal.
The Mansfield Reporter 06/06/1919 carries the photo and reports the death of John William Frow as a prisoner of war. Before coming to Mansfield he was at Laxton and Southwell. He was an old boy of Rosemary School and before joining the army was employed by Messrs. Marsden.
Peter Holt says that there were no names on the memorial in Gainsborough, but this has been remedied. "The roll of honour is a booklet of town soldiers who died during the Great War and is based on names published in the Gainsborough News. The Roll was first compiled by Mr R H Johnson in the mid 1980s. Peter Bradshaw, Assistant headteacher at Middlefield and then Trent Valley Academy and some of his Secondary School pupils have also added around 100 names through their own research from asking their families, and researching the Common wealth War Graves website and Soldiers Died in the Great War and through battlefiield visits. They have also compared all the other smaller war memorials in churches and schools across the town. ( A Second World War Roll has also been created). There is also now a printed physical memorial at Gainsborough Heritage Centre , incorporating a scene with a WW1 Tommy, using the Roll compiled by Peter Bradshaw. It was unveiled in 2018."
William John Frow is remembered at Seaburn on S142.06
He is also remembered in the DLI Book of Remembrance page 293
