People on board

CROMPTON, Frank

Frank Crompton was born in 1891 in Bury, Lancashire to William Crompton and Ann Frankland. Frank was the eldest of their six children, one of whom died in infancy. William Crompton was a ‘House Painter’ and the next three children were born in Rochdale, Accrington and Bury, suggesting the family moved within Lancashire for work. They were in Bury in 1901 when William’s seventy-one year old widowed mother was living with them. By 1911 the family had moved to Stretford, south of Manchester and William had become an Insurance Agent. Frank was a Clerk, Wilfred a Law Clerk and Tom was a Hairdresser’s Assistant. The two youngest, Fred and Emmeline, were at school.

Tom, Thomas Frankland, enlisted in the King’s Liverpool Regiment in November 1914 and was in France by September 1915. He died of wounds in Le Havre in July 1916. Wilfred married in 1916 but in 1917 he was a Sergeant in the 1st/6th Battalion of the Manchester Regiment which was fighting on the Western Front. He was killed in action on the 6th of September 1917.

It is not known when Frank enlisted in the Loyal North Lancashire Regiment, before being transferred to the Labour Corps. He was then transferred to the 653rd Home Service Employment Company in Ireland. Frank must have had medical problems because only men placed in the B3 and C3 medical categories, the lowest possible, were placed in that role. Presumably returning home to England on leave, he travelled on RMS Leinster on the 10th of October 1918. He did not survive the sinking but his body was recovered and he was buried in Grangegorman Military Cemetery in Dublin.

The names of Frank, Wilfred and Thomas Crompton are all included in the Borough of Stretford WW1 Book of Remembrance. Their names are also inscribed on the family grave in Blackpool with their parents and brother Fred, who died in 1928.