People on board

MEGROFF, Frederick George

Frederick George Megroff was born in 1890 in London to William James Megroff and Martha Perry. He was the fourth of their five children, two older girls and an older and a younger son. William was a Bootmaker, a Cordwainer on Frederick’s baptismal entry. The family lived in the St Pancras area of London and were in Munster Square when Frederick was born. In 1901 the eldest son, also William James, gave his occupation as ‘Timber Porter’.

Martha Megroff née Perry died in 1907, aged fifty-five, and the following year William remarried to a widow named Mahlah McIntosh. 1908 also saw the marriage of the eldest girl, Florence. In the 1911 census Frederick, now named George, was a Porter while his younger brother Ernest was a ‘Gunmaker Shop Boy Improver’. Not far away William James Jnr. now married and a ‘Commercial Motor Driver’, had a boarder in his house who would marry his sister Ethel Rose later that year.

In 1912 William James Snr. died aged sixty-three. In 1915 both Ernest and Frederick married, the latter to Lydia Maud Rosalina Yates in December. On their marriage certificate he gave his occupation as ‘Sergeant Army Ordnance Corps’. Only transcripts of his military records are available which record that he enlisted at Woolwich, but do not say when. In October 1918 he was Armourer Staff Sergeant, and according to one source, attached to the South Irish Horse.

He was awarded the Victory and British medals which indicates that he had served at the Front. It is not known specifically why Frederick Megroff was in Ireland but the role of the Army Ordnance Corps was to maintain all kinds of military equipment. Six other members of the Corps travelled on RMS Leinster on the 10th of October 1918, but only one survived. Frederick Megroff’s body was recovered after the sinking and he was buried in Grangegorman Military Cemetery in Dublin. His name is recorded on the War Memorial at the R.A.O.C. headquarters at Deepcut, Surrey.