(Thomas) Frederick THOMPSON

Frederick Thompson's photograph on the war memorial in St Aldates Police Station, Oxford. Image courtesy of John Stobbs.

It is not clear how Thomas Frederick Thompson came to be commemorated on the memorial in St Matthew’s Church, as he had no obvious link with Grandpont or Cold Harbour. His name appears as ‘Frederick Thompson’ on the Oxford City Second Word War Roll of Honour, and on all three Oxford police memorials (see below). The St Aldates Police Station memorial has photographs of City of Oxford police officers killed in both world wars. All the other men are pictured in their police uniforms but Frederick appears in his RAF uniform (left) because he never became a police officer (though that might have been his intention before the outbreak of war). Instead he worked as a clerk in the police offices.

Thomas Frederick Thompson, known as Frederick, was born on 20 March 1921 in Evesham, Worcestershire. He was the third of the six children of George Thompson of Wollaston (a village near Stourbridge, Worcestershire) and Helen (Nellie) Johns of Lostwithiel, Cornwall. At the age of eighteen George had joined the army and he served with the 4th Battalion of the Worcester Regiment for almost seven years. A month after leaving the forces, in April 1913, he joined the Worcester Constabulary as a police constable.

George was recalled to the army on the outbreak of the First World War and was wounded at the front. He was declared medically unfit for both the army and the police force in late 1914, but after surgery for varicose veins he returned to work with the police. In 1916 he married Helen Johns, who was the daughter of a police officer. Their first son, George, was born in her home county of Cornwall the following year. Soon afterwards the family moved north: the 1921 census recorded George senior and Helen living in Evesham, Worcestershire, with their children Doris (born 1920) and Thomas Frederick (1921). Their oldest son George junior appears to have been absent.

George senior’s career continued to suffer due to ill health – he had chronic gastric problems, and all his teeth were removed in 1924 – and bouts of drinking. He was moved between police stations in the area, and the birthplaces of Frederick’s three younger siblings indicate the unsettled nature of the family’s life: Cyril was born in Evesham in 1923; Stanley in Pershore in 1926; and Gerald in Stourbridge in 1929.

By the end of 1929 George senior was suffering from a gastric ulcer which required surgery. He died in April 1930, aged 42, leaving his wife Helen with six children, the oldest aged twelve and the youngest just six months. George’s police colleagues collected £30 for the family but Helen was described as “without means” and “having to sell her furniture”. Four of the six children, including Frederick, entered the Southern Provincial Police Orphanage in Redhill, Surrey.

Helen returned to her home town of Lostwithiel, Cornwall. She remarried there in 1932; her new husband, Richard Ayres, was a bank official, also from Cornwall. By 1939 the couple were living in Mead Vale, between Reigate and Redhill, with Helen’s two oldest children, George (now aged 22, and employed in a printing works), and Doris (nineteen, a shorthand typist in a bank). Stanley (thirteen) was still living in the nearby orphanage, and it is likely that Gerald (ten) was also there, though large sections of the 1939 register for the orphanage are still closed for data protection reasons. Cyril would by now be sixteen, and so was likely to be working and living independently (though it’s not been possible to find him elsewhere in the 1939 register).

Frederick, meanwhile, had left the orphanage and moved to Oxford, where he was employed by the city police force as a clerk. He was lodging at 45 South Parade, Summertown, with a police constable, Charles Higgins, and his wife. It’s not clear what Frederick’s connection with Oxford was, but it’s possible that police forces helped police orphans by recruiting them for junior civilian roles.

During the war Frederick joined the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve as a Sergeant, service number 1159188. He was placed in 502 (Ulster) Squadron, which had become part of RAF Coastal Command in 1938. When war broke out the squadron was used to fly anti-submarine attacks off the Atlantic coast of Ireland. Later, it was moved to bases in Norfolk and St Eval, Cornwall.

Frederick’s plane was lost without trace in the Bay of Biscay, in the north-eastern Atlantic, on 10 August 1942, having been diverted from an anti-submarine warfare (ASW) patrol to search for an enemy surface vessel. All six crew members died. Frederick was 21.

Frederick is named on panel 95 of the Air Forces Memorial at Runnymede, near Englefield Green, Surrey. He is also commemorated on the three Oxford police memorials: the one in St Aldates Police Station; the marble Oxford City Police memorial in the church of St Michael at the Northgate, Cornmarket; and the Thames Valley Police memorial in Kidlington. There are only three other men in the Second World War sections of those police memorials; one of them is Herbert Hacksley, another of our 24 Men of Grandpont and Cold Harbour. We wonder whether Frederick's connection with Grandpont might have been through Herbert: perhaps they were friends as well as colleagues at the police station in St Aldates, and as Frederick had no family in Oxford, maybe Herbert's wife Gladys asked for both their names to be inscribed on the St Matthew's memorial.

Frederick Thompson is also commemorated on the Oxford City Second World War Roll of Honour, which is in the church of St Michael at the Northgate on Cornmarket.

Frederick’s mother Helen continued to live in Surrey after the death of her second husband Richard Ayres in November 1940. She applied to have her police pension – which had been terminated when she remarried – re-instated. (The decision on this is not recorded.) Surrey electoral registers for the 1950s show Helen reunited with her three younger sons. As adults they were all living with her at 13 Mead Vale, Reigate, the house she had occupied since the 1930s. Helen died in 1969, aged 77.

Frederick’s older sister Doris married a carpenter, Christopher Masters, in 1947. They had met whilst living in the Southern Provincial Police Orphanage in Redhill.

Research by Siobhan Lancaster; with thanks to Bob Pooler for help with information from the Worcestershire Police History Archive.

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