William James Franklin, born 1843?

We know for certain that William James Franklin, the father-in-law of George Shirran, enlisted with the 31^st Regiment of Foot on 21^st July 1863. His history prior to that date is conjectural, in part because he seems to have been confused as to his own birthdate and gave a different age almost every time he was asked, but it is possible to identify a boy in the birth and census records who is probably him, and to rough out an early history for him if he is that boy. Much research on the Franklin family has been done by Jenny Franklin and others: about half of what follows is my own research and the rest comes from them.

As regards the early part of his life I decided to separate the workings-out and references onto separate pages and then present this page as a summary, because as it was it was starting to give me spots before the eyes. The following supplementary material exists:

a): A detailed chronology of what we know or can surmise about William Franklin, with particular reference to his army service.

c): A summary of census and other information relating to William Franklins born in the early 1880s in the Brackley area of Northamptonshire, with references.

A boy whom we believe to have been the future Colour Sergeant Franklin was born in Helmdon in Northamptonshire in 1843, probably in April or May and probably listed just as "William Franklin", and was christened William James Franklin in Helmdon on 4^th June 1843 - although as at the census of 1851 he was apparently going by the name James. His parents' names were William and Ann Franklin.

William the elder, the father, was born in Claydon in Oxfordshire round about 1820, or possibly in Helmdon six years earlier (census entries for the family are confused: it seems likely that they were illiterate and their entries were filled in by neighbours or by the enumerator). Ann was born Ann Brum, the daughter of Samuel and Elizabeth Brum, in Radstone in South Northamptonshire on 23^rd February 1820. The couple married in Radstone on 18^th November 1839.

As at spring 1841 the family were living at The Green, Helmdon and William the elder was an agricultural labourer. In 1851 they were still in Helmdon, no other address given, and he was again a farm labourer, while Ann was described as a lacemaker. In 1861 the family were at Sight Hill near The Green, Helmdon, William was a machinist-sawyer (possibly - the census entry is hard to read) and Ann is not listed as working, probably because by that point she had too many children to find time for making lace.

It's difficult to sort the family out exactly, especially as their ages and even names seem to have been subject to change without notice, but the family appear to have had the following children, all born in Helmdon:

Jane, born November/December 1840, probably died young
William James, a.k.a. James, born April or May 1843
Frederick, born circa 1844/1845
Jane (again), born circa 1846/1847
Elizabeth, born circa 1848/1849, or possibly 1845/1846 (the census is inconsistent)
Benedict, born circa 1849/1850 (possibly Richard, below, under another name)
Richard, born November/December 1850
Samuel, born circa 1851/1852
Meryl, born circa 1853/1854
Ruth, born circa 1855/1856
Letmaratha, born circa 1859/1860
Florence, born after 1861

The child whose name looks like Letmaratha in the census is presumably the Let Maretta Franklin whose birth was recorded in Brackley in the March quarter of 1860. Maretta is a known variant of Marietta, and it has been suggested that Let might be a shortened form of Letitia or Lettice. [GRO Statutory Births: March quarter 1860, Brackley 3b 14]

As at spring 1851 the eight-year-old James/William James was working as a farm boy, and so was his six-year-old brother Frederick. If the children had any schooling at all they would have gone to the primary school in Helmdon, but if so it can't have been for more than a couple of years.

In spring 1861 James or William James is no longer at home, but the younger children are still living with their parents in Helmdon. Elizabeth is a lacemaker and Benedict (who is probably Richard under another name, since this is the only time the name Benedict ever appears) is a labour sawyer, presumably working with his father, the machinist sawyer.

At some point after the birth of his son in the mid 1870s, the future Colour Sergeant Franklin would list his next of kin as his parents as William and Jane [sic] of Birmingham [WF Military History summary as at 1884]. There is other supporting evidence that the family moved to the Aston district on the north-east side of Birmingham.

In 1871 a Richard Franklin, born in Helmdon and of the right age to be the Richard who was four months old in 1851, turns up in Erdington, near Sutton Coldfield on the north-east side of Birmingham [Census for England & Wales 18##: RG n° ##; Piece ##; Folio ##; Page ##; Registration District ##; Sub-District ##; Enumeration District ##].

Rossbret Institutions Website

On 21^st February 1881 William Franklin, a coal carter aged fifty-nine and so born circa 1821, died at Poplar Place, Watery Lane in Deritend, Birmingham, death being registered in the sub-district of Deritend, district Aston, Warwickshire. The informant, who was present when he died, was his daughter Ruth Case of St Andrews Road, Aston.

In 1891 an Ann Franklin, widow aged seventy-two, born in Radstone, is living as a pauper in Aston Union Workhouse, Erdington [Census for England & Wales 1891: RG n° RG12; Piece 2427; Folio 94; Page 15; Registration District Aston; Sub-District Erdington; Enumeration District 21].

The whereabouts of William James Franklin between the 1851 census and his enlistment in July 1863 is unknown. On his enlistment form he was said to be a labourer [WF Enlistment], but since he enlisted at the port of Chatham (a long way from home and not much of a draw to anybody not connected with the sea) it's possible he'd been working on boats or barges.

In 1861 a William Franklin of the right age, single and from the Brackley area was the live-in servant of a couple called William and Jane Betts of Sutton Coldfield, near Aston on the outskirts of Birmingham. If this is the same William Franklin who became Colour Franklin, it might explain why he apparently gave his parents' names as "William and Jane" when filling in his next of kin. He might for some reason actually have put William and Jane Betts down as foster parents - there's a strip of brown paper tape on his army records which would cover the name "Betts", if it's there - or he might just have got so used to saying "William and Jane" rather than "William and Ann" that he did it automatically.

However, if the William Franklin in Sutton Coldfield is the future Colour Franklin then there's an error in the census, because it lists him as born in Westbury, not Helmdon. Also, there were two William Franklins in the same age bracket who definitely were born in Westbury, and if the one in Sutton Coldfield isn't one of them, one of them is unaccounted for. On the whole, then, it probably isn't the future Colour Franklin - but it suggests a trend for young people to move from the Brackley/Westbury/Helmdon area to Aston. Birmingham was the nearest big city anyway, but there may have been some specific family or industrial reason why they tended to end up in Aston rather than any other part of Birmingham.

There's another curious connection with Aston. In 1851 a girl called Phebe Needle was living next door to (William) James Franklin and his parents in Helmdon. She was slightly younger than (William) James and his brother Frederick, and slightly older than his brother Richard. Ten years later, in 1861, she was living next door to a quite different William Franklin (the son of John and Elisabeth), also slightly older than her, and his brother John, slightly younger than her.

In the June quarter of 1864 (that is, in April, May or June, or possibly the last few days of March) Phebe gave birth to an illegitimate son, Harry Franklin Needle, in Aston [GRO Statutory Births: June quarter 1864, Aston Vol. 6D Page 327]. It's possible that Franklin was a famly name in her own family, but there's at least a strong suggestion that her baby's father was a Franklin.

It has been suggested that Harry was the son of William James Franklin, but this seems unlikely. If he was living in Aston, and enlisted in Chatham on 21^st July 1863 (as he did), he would surely have to have left Aston by about the 14^th, so for Phebe to have a baby in April of the following year William would have had to have got her pregnant in the two weeks preceding his departure, and you would have to ask why, if he was living in Aston right up until July 1863, he would have chosen to go all the way to Chatham to enlist. What's more, Phebe went on to have two more illegitimate children, one of them conceived while William was in Malta.

Phebe may have gone to Aston just because Birmingham was the nearest big town, and Aston was convenient in some way. She undoubtedly knew (William) James as a child, and may well have gone to Aston because she had friends there, and (William) James's family may have been the friends in Aston that she had.

But if the father of her baby was one of the boys from that family, it was almost certainly Frederick or Richard/Benedict, and it seems more likely that the father was one of the boys from the other Franklin family that she lived next door to as a teenager. And if she went to visit (William) James's family because she knew she was pregnant and wanted their support, it can't have been (William) James himself she was visiting, unless she was a bit behind on her information, because she can't have been more than three weeks pregnant at the outside, if she was already pregnant at all, when he was enlisting in Chatham.

Even if we discount Phebe, however, it's pretty certain that William James had a serious relationship at about this time. According to the details of his marriage to Caroline Ellen Walsh in June 1873 [Gibraltar Chaplain's Returns 1873-74 page 303] he was a widower, meaning that he had been married before Caroline and his first wife had died. His army records [WF Enlistment] show him as single when he enlisted in July 1863, and there's no mention in his army records [WF Military History summary as at 1884] of a wife other than Caroline Ellen Walsh.

The implication then is that he was married, and lost his wife (possibly in childbirth) prior to July 1863. If he was the William who was working for William and Jane Betts in spring 1861, then he was listed as single at that time, which imposes further restrictions.

A William James Franklin married in Aston in the June quarter of 1860 to a wife called Ann Hanson, but he seems pretty definitely to be not our William - rather, he seems to be the same William Franklin, stonemason, husband of Ann, who turns up in Aston in the the 1881 census with a birthdate in 1839-1840 and a birthplace in Stourbridge. There are also three plain William Franklins who married in the Birmingham area in the right sort of time-frame - but if "our" William is not the one who worked for William and Jane Betts then we have no evidence that he was ever in the Birmingham area at all, although his parents and some of his siblings seem to have been. He could have loved and lost in Helmdon - or in Chatham.

We know that the William James Franklin who was my great great grandfather - whichever William Franklin that was - enlisted at Chatham "for a Bounty of £1.00 and a Free Kit" between 21^st and 25^th July 1863. Enlistment took that long because there were two rounds of medical examination, enlistment at Chatham and attestation at Rochester to be got through. He was described as nineteen, a labourer born in Helmdon, Northamptonshire, 5'7"or 5'7½", with a 36" chest, blue eyes, light brown hair and a fresh complexion, good muscular development and no injuries, marks or disabilities. His conduct over the years was evidently to prove exemplary, for he received five lots of Good Conduct Pay, eventually taking him up to five pence a day extra money, equivalent probably to a couple of pounds a day in modern currency.

He signed up as a Private initially for ten years with the 31^st (Huntingdonshire) Regiment of Foot, formerly a Marine unit and still tending to be posted to ports, and known as the Young Buffs because their uniform resembled that of the 3^rd Regiment of Foot, the Buffs, and they had once been mistaken for them by George II. The 31^st had a long and glorious history, but William happened to join them during a rare quiet patch, and in fact was never to see action. [Roll of Honour]

A detailed chronology of his army service is provided separately. His Military History summarises his postings thus:

24^th July 1863 - 10^th June 1867 Home
11^th June 1867 - 15^th March 1872 Malta
16^th March 1872 - 2^nd May 1876 Gibraltar
3^rd May 1876 - 25^th September 1884 Home
26^th September 1884 - 14^th October 1884 Home

His initial period at "home" consisted of four months in Chatham, ten months in Plymouth, two in Aldershot and then back to Plymouth in December 1864, where he was promoted to Corporal two months later. After fifteen months in Plymouth he went to Portsmouth for four and a half months, and thence to the Curragh of Kildare in Southern Ireland - his first posting overseas, although it still counted as "home". He remained at the Curragh for six months and then spent four and a half months at Templemore in North Tipperary. It may have been during this posting in Ireland that he met his future wife Caroline Ellen Walsh, who was born in County Cork. [Gibraltar Chaplain's Returns 1873-74 page 303; 1911 census for Reading]

In June 1867 William was sent to Malta, where he remained until March 1872. While on Malta he was promoted to Sergeant, and re-engaged at Valletta to serve for twenty-one years: but he was also hospitalised twice.

Maltese school site

In March 1872 he was sent to Gibraltar, where he was appointed as Colour Sergeant a year later. Hereafter he would have been known as Colour Franklin or Colour Sergeant Franklin, not Sergeant Franklin. A couple of months after that he was admitted to hospital again for four days, apparently with an inflammation plus what looks like "C & issue" in curly brackets, brought on by a bad reaction to vaccination. An "issue" in a medical sense is either an ooze of some sort of fluid, or an incision or artificial ulcer made in order to drain fluid, such as when lancing a boil. The 'C' might stand for "cut", possibly. It could also be "C & Tissue".

On 9^th June 1873, seventeen days after being discharged from hospital, William - a widower who was then aged about thirty, but is claimed on his marriage certificate to be twenty-five - married Caroline Ellen Walsh, an Irish girl aged about eighteen, the daughter of John Walsh. We know from the census that she was born in Cork City but her mother, also Caroline Walsh, was born in Southsea, Portsmouth and as such was probably English. [Gibraltar Chaplain's Returns 1873-74 page 303; 1881 census for Hougham, Kent; 1901 census for Cork; 1911 census for Reading]

Some time before April 1874 the couple had a son, listed in the 1881 census as William J. E. Franklin, and in his father's list of next of kin as W. G. Elliot Franklin. Family information is that the "G" stood for George and that he was usually known as George.

Between April 1875 and April 1876 they went on to have a daughter, Florence Blanche Franklin, my great grandmother. [1881 census for Hougham, Kent; WF Military History summary as at 1884]

On 27^th December 1875 William was again admitted to hospital for five days, this time with something almost illegible which is probably "ulcer" and which was treated with cold water. "Circumstances in or by which Disease was induced" is even less legible but might be "injury". This may have been a varicose ulcer, as the book The Complete Herbalist: The People Their Own Physicians by the Use of Nature's Remedies by Dr O Phelps Brown, published in 1878, lists cold water as a treatment for varicose ulcer.

In May 1876 William, and presumably his family, arrived back in Portland, an island off Dorset on the south coast of England: hereafter all his postings would be in Britain. Fourteen and a half months later, in late July 1877, they moved to Aldershot. Some time after they arrived at Aldershot and before April 1878, William and Caroline's second daughter Lillian Edith Franklin was born. [1881 census for Hougham, Kent]

At the end of June 1878 they arrived in Fleetwood, where they were to remain for nine months and where William was successfully re-vaccinated. In early April 1879 they returned to Chatham whence William had started out, and their daughter Ethel Maud Franklin, after whom my grandmother was to be named, was born some time in the following twelve months. [1881 census for Hougham, Kent]

After nineteen months at Chatham they were sent east to Dover, arriving the day before Hallowe'en 1880. While they were there, on 21^st February 1881, a William Franklin aged fifty-nine, a coal-carter, died in Aston near Birmingham. This was probably William James' father, the William who was married to Ann Brum, especially as he had a daughter Ruth Case who was present at the death, and we know that the William who was married to Ann Brum had a daughter called Ruth. [GRO death certificate for the sub-district of Deritend, Warwickshire, Registration District Aston, seen by Jenny Franklin]

As at 3^rd April 1881 Caroline Ellen and the four children were living at the Grand Shaft Barracks, Hougham, Kent, an extremely well-appointed barracks complex on the cliffs above Dover, which is described in more detail in the section on Florence Blanche Franklin. William meanwhile was at the School of Musketry at Hythe, near Elham, Kent, where he would obtain a Hythe Certificate - possibly a 2^nd Class one. His army records are laid out in such a way as to make it ambiguous as to whether he had a "Hythe Certificate 2^nd Class", or a "Hythe Certificate" plus a "Certificate of Education 2^nd Class" - but on the whole I think it's the latter, since he would have needed a 2^nd Class Certificate of Education in order to become a Sergeant. [1881 census for Hougham, Kent; 1881 census for Elham, Kent; Certificates of Education in the British Army]

On 1^st July 1881 the 31^st Regiment of Foot became the 1^st East Surrey Regiment. On the same day William Franklin was "reopened" as a Colour Sergeant with the new regiment - presumably just a way of saying that his contract had been passed to the new unit.

In November of that year he was transferred to the 2^nd (South) Middlesex Rifle Volunteers, a group which had been formed in 1859 and had its headquarters at Fulham [Gommecourt commemorative web-page]. Presumably this was a direct result of his having completed advanced musketry training at Hythe. He stayed with the (South) Middlesex for six and a half months before being transferred as Colour Sergeant to 1^st Volunteer Battalion The King's Royal Rifle Corps on 1^st June 1882. This seems to be the same outfit as Queen Victoria's Rifles, a famously well-regarded and long-lived volunteer unit of sharpshooters based in a side-street near Berkeley Square. [The Royal Green Jackets (Rifles) Museum website] The nomenclature of the Rifle Volunteers is complex and there is some historical confusion about when exactly Queen Victoria's Rifles were given the name 1^st Volunteer Battalion The King's Royal Rifle Corps, and how they were related to 1^st Middlesex Rifle Volunteers and 2^nd (South) Middlesex Rifle Volunteers. It is possible that William Franklin was again not actually transferred, but simply stayed with his unit through a name-change.

By this point, William was nearly at the end of his service. Two and a quarter years after he joined the 1^st Volunteer Battalion The King's Royal Rifle Corps, on 25^th September 1884, his Record of Service was signed off as accurate by a Staff Paymaster and his Military History shows his period of home service as coming to an end - but then he was immediately taken on again for a further period of home service of nineteen days, marked "continued" on his records.

There is no obvious reason for this. He had already served twenty-one years and sixty-four days before the extra nineteen days were added, and the "Amount of services towards limited engagement" column on his Record of Service shows that the full period was counted towards his pay - it wasn't that he had to work extra weeks to make up for the time he had spent off sick. My best guess is that he was asked to stay on for a few weeks because his replacement wasn't quite ready to take over.

Colour Franklin was finally discharged on 14^th October 1884 in Winchester, the location of the Rifle Depot, home base of the Rifle Corps since 1858 [Wiki: King's Royal Rifle Corps]. At some point on or prior to his discharge William was awarded the Good Conduct Medal. His character and conduct on discharge were said to be "very good" and his habits temperate - unsurprisingly, since by the time of his discharge he was receiving five lots of Good Conduct Pay.

At the bottom of his Military History form a hand-written address is given on the line where the printed text begins "Died ..." The handwriting says "Address N° 6 Cassidy Road Fulham R^d London SW." and then a couple of letters one of which is partially torn away - possibly "UK". The address is that of an ordinary back street in Fulham now mainly given over to modern blocks of flats. It is not the house at which he was later to die, so presumably it's his home address when he was discharged.

Of William's life after he left the army, we can catch sporadic glimpses. We know that by 1889 the family were back in Gibraltar, because William and Caroline's son Francis Arthur Franklin, known as Frank, was born in Gibraltar on 6^th April 1889. It was probably not long after this that their eldest boy William George Elliot Franklin joined the East Surreys: he was to enjoy a successful army career and rise to be Company Sergeant Major.

It is noteworthy that nine years elapsed between the births of Ethel Maud and Francis Arthur. The census of 1911 stated that William and Caroline had had eleven children, of whom seven were alive as at the census. We know the names of the seven children who were alive in 1911, but the other four are unaccounted for, and may have been infant deaths occurring during this nine-year gap.

We know that in spring 1891 someone who was probably William's mother was in the Aston Union Workhouse - but since William was in Gibraltar there presumably wasn't much he could do about it.

On 10^th February 1892 William's daughter Florence Blanche married George Shirran, a Sergeant in ^st Battalion The Black Watch, at the Presbyterian church in Gibraltar: the couple were living in South Barracks, Windmill Hill [GROS Statutory Marriages 1892 055/AF 0063]. Clearly, a large part of the family had decamped to Gibraltar.

A few years later, Sergeant Shirran went on to become a Colour Sergeant himself. [GS Statement of Services on discharge in 1905 #2] This could just be coincidence, or it could be an indication that George liked and admired his father-in-law, and was influenced by his career choices - or that he wanted to prove something to him.

On the registry entry for Florence's marriage, her father's occupation is given as prison warder: a job which he was presumably inspired to apply for (or even shoehorned into) by his own father-in-law John Walsh, who was a warder at a military prison [GROS Statutory Marriages 1892 055/AF 0063; GRO Statutory Deaths, December quarter 1915, Reading, 2c 471]. The following year, William and Caroline's son Ernest Albert Franklin was born in Gibraltar on 12^th November 1893 and baptised on 7^th December. His father's occupation is confirmed as being a warden in the military prison of the garrison at Gibraltar.

Some time between 1893 and 1897, the family moved to Cork in Southern Ireland. William and Caroline's son Lancelot Thomas Franklin was born in Cork City on or about 27^th October 1897 - calculated by working backwards from his claimed age on later joining the army.

As at the census of 31^st March 1901, William J Franklin, aged fifty-four and English-born, was a warder at the military prison in the north-east ward of Cork City, in Southern Ireland. He was living in House 4 of the warders' quarters, along with his wife Caroline E Franklin, aged forty-four, born in Cork City, and their children Lillian E Franklin, aged twenty-three, born in England, single; Francis E Franklin, aged eleven, born in Gibraltar; George E A Franklin, aged seven, born in Gibraltar; and Lancelot Franklin, three, born in Cork City. All were members of the Church of England; all could read and write except for Lancelot, who could only read. [1901 census for Cork]

The eldest boy, William George Elliot Franklin, married in late 1904 [GRO Statutory Marriages, December quarter 1904, Elham 2a 2420]. Lillian Edith married Thomas Stone round about 1904-1905 (the couple have a five-year-old son in the 1911 census). On 28^th February 1905 Francis Arthur Franklin joined the 9^th Battalion The King's Royal Rifles, but he was discharged from them by purchase in January 1906, and enlisted in the East Surreys on 4^th November 1907. His brother Ernest Albert joined the East Surreys in June 1908 - in Reading, so the family were probably already living there by this point.

Note that Francis Arthur joined the 9^th Battalion The King's Royal Rifles in February 1905 in Cork, and Lillian Edith's first baby, born in 1905 or 1906, was born at the army camp at the Curragh of Kildare. This strongly suggests, although it does not prove, that the whole family remained in Ireland until at least 1905.

The census of 2^nd April 1911 shows William, described as an army pensioner, living with Caroline, their thirteen-year-old son Lancelot and Caroline's mother Caroline Walsh, a widow and old-age pensioner aged eighty-five. Their address is 4 St George's Terrace, Reading. The fact that he and Caroline had so many children, continuing until William was in his mid fifties, and that they had his mother-in-law living with them in what was a pretty small house, suggests that he was probably affectionate and easy-going - which may have made him a blessing as a prison warder. If indeed it was his own mother who ended up in the Aston workhouse, that casts an interesting light on his willingness to have his ageing mother-in-law live with him. [1911 census for Reading]

The census shows that William and Caroline had eleven live-born children, of whom seven were alive as at 2^nd April 1911. Lancelot was probably the youngest of the children - certainly the youngest surviving child.

On 2^nd February 1912, Lancelot too joined the East Surreys at Reading, but he was never to settle into the army. His army career, if you could call it that, was marred by constant trouble over minor offences such as cheeking an NCO, sleeping in or wandering off: last-born of a father in his fifties and a mother in her forties, he may have had some kind of genetic fault leading to a learning or personality disorder. Or he might have been teased unmercifully about being called Lancelot, until he went a bit off the rails.

The couple had four sons in the army during world War One, as well as a son-in-law, George Shirran. George Shirran fought at the Battle of Loos as a Company Quartermaster Sergeant and was then sent back to Britain to do home service, rising to Regimental Quartermaster Sergeant. [Not long afterwards, on 9^th December 1915, William's mother-in-law Caroline Walsh died at the family home in Reading.] William George Elliot Franklin survived the war and was still in the army in 1922, a Company Sergeant Major in the 1^st East Surreys. Francis Arthur Franklin, who was a Lance Corporal in the 2^nd East surreys as at April 1911, also survived the war. Ernest Albert, who rose to be Company Quartermaster Sergeant, was a prisoner of war from May 1917 to December 1918, but also survived.

Lancelot, however, the youngest boy, went missing - in action, presumably - and died on or about 31^st March 1918, aged twenty. He must have died in battle, not in a hospital or in a trench next to his mates, because his fate at first seems to have been uncertain and his identity disc wasn't returned to his family until late December 1919. Immediately afterwards, on 30^th December 1919, William and Caroline's nineteen-year-old grandson Lance-Corporal William John George Shirran of the Black Watch, son of their daughter Florence Blanche, died at his parents' home in Edinburgh of rheumatic fever [CWGC records; GROS Statutory Deaths 1919 685/04 1668]. William and Caroline weren't informed as to Lancelot's place of burial until March 1920.

To make matters worse, initially in December 1919 the family were told that Lancelot wasn't entitled to any medals, presumably owing to his erratic conduct. He was eventually awarded the British War Medal 1914-1919 and the Victory Medal, but I don't know whether that was before or after his father's death. The CWGC describes him as "Son of Mrs. C. Franklin, of 58, Park Rd., Aldershot": we don't know why his father's name isn't listed. It could be that his father disowned him owing to his poor conduct in the army; or it could simply be that by the time the CWGC recorded his details his father was already dead.

In the September quarter of 1920, a few months after they learned of Lancelor's burial-place, their son Ernest Albert Franklin married Ada Thirza Hinckley - and their son-in-law Thomas Stone, husband of their daughter Lillian, died. [GRO Statutory Deaths, September quarter 1920, Hartley W. 2c 195]

William James Franklin, an army pensioner, died of senile decay on 21^st August 1922 at 58 Park Road, Aldershot, either just before or just after his son Francis Arthur's marriage. He was reported to be eighty, but was almost certainly seventy-nine. The informant, who was present at the death, was Lillian E Stone - that is, William's daughter Lillian Edith. [GRO Statutory Deaths, September quarter 1922, Farnham, 21 143]