Notes
The Bradford Grammar School website (see References) states: 'William Affleck Frood was born in Bradford in the early part of 1895, one of two children of William Frood and Elizabeth Mackay. His mother came from Edinburgh, and although his father was born in Bradford, he too was from a Scottish family. The Froods were drapers, dealers in cloth for making clothing. The business in England was started by William Affleck’s grandfather, another William, who moved to Bradford in the 1850s. His three sons William, Bryce and Andrew subsequently continued the business. The younger William was described as a ‘draper and
clothier’ (1901) and a ‘draper and tailor’ in 1911, and in 1912 as a ’travelling draper’. The premises were at 25, Lumb Lane near Bradford centre, and William and Bryce lived close to the shop. In 1915, William joined the Victoria Lodge of the Freemasons. Bryce’s son Robert would continue the business into the second half of the twentieth century.
William Affleck Frood started at Bradford Grammar School in 1903 when he was eight. He was a promising scholar who was twice awarded second place for the form prize. In his last year he came fourth overall in Form Second Lower, and was first in Maths and Geography. Six pupils with whom he shared a form would die in the war. When he left Bradford Grammar in July 1906, William Frood was only eleven. He seems to have completed his secondary education at Grange Road Secondary School, in Great Horton. Two students from Southfield School, the modern successor, made a pilgrimage to the Thiepval Memorial in 2014 to view his name.
What William did after school we can only speculate—it would seem likely that he worked
with his father and his uncles. When war came in 1914, William was nineteen. He seems to have enlisted together with his cousin, George Bryce Frood, for they were both in the 1st/2nd West Riding Field Ambulance, Royal Army Medical Corps, as privates and with similar service numbers (586 and 546 respectively). This was a Territorial Army unit (not a vehicle), part of the 49th West Riding Division, which went to the Western Front in April 1915 and
spent the second half of the year heavily engaged in the Ypres Salient. George Frood, however, transferred to the Royal Engineers, and was then commissioned into the Duke of Wellington’s West Riding Regiment.
The circumstances of William’s death cannot be established now. The 49th Division was in the Thiepval sector in the aftermath of the opening of the Somme offensive, but the 2nd West Riding Field Ambulance war diary is missing for July 1916. Stretcher bearers from a Field Ambulance were responsible for evacuating casualties from Regimental Aid Posts only a few hundred yards from the front line, so were exposed to danger. Of the records relating to Frood, one states he was ’Killed in Action’, and another states ’Death presumed’. These
suggest that he was killed by enemy fire. Another private in the same unit, Albert Pashley from Sheffield, was killed on the same day, perhaps at the same time. Neither man’s body was identified for burial, so they are both recorded on the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing. William Frood is also remembered on two school war memorials. His cousin George survived
the war and became an analytical chemist. William was unmarried.'