People on board

HORTON, Frank

Frank Horton was born in Wrexham, North Wales, on 6 January 1896 to Joseph Horton and Mary Elizabeth Helliwell. Joseph was from Sheffield where he carried on his business of Pawnbroker, and they had two sons Joseph 1888 and John Percy in 1891. In 1893 the family moved to Wrexham where Joseph was granted a pawnbroker’s licence for Church Street, while they lived at 1 Temple Row, where Frank was born. Their eldest child, Joseph, died in 1899, but a daughter, Ethel, was born in 1902. Frank was educated at Ashville College in Harrogate and was back in Wrexham by 1911 where both he and Percy worked with their father in the family pawnbroking and jewellery business.

Frank enlisted in the army in February 1916 and received his officer’s commission a few months later. In February 1918 he was fighting with the King’s Liverpool Regiment at the Battle of Cambrai, where he was awarded the Military Cross for “conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty … in command of an isolated bombing post which was heavily shelled … held his position … and repulsed every attack”. Frank returned home on leave in July 1918 and was sent to Ireland for medical reasons. He was returning to duty on RMS Leinster on 10 October when the ship was torpedoed, and he did not survive the sinking. His body was not recovered but his name is remembered on the Hollybank Memorial in Southampton and on the Wrexham War Memorial.