Barwick in Elmet & Scholes War Memorials Web Site

Pte. F. Pickersgill

Name & Rank	Private Frank Pickersgill
Unit	No. 32368, 10th Bn., York and Lancaster Regiment.
How & When Died	Killed in Action, 5 October 1917.
Age, if known	31 years.
Next of Kin details	Son of Mrs Kate Hill, of Whinmoor, Seacroft, Leeds.
Commemoration Details	No known grave, therefore, commemorated on the Tyne Cot Memorial to the Missing, Zonnebeke, Belgium, Panel 125 - 128.
Other Information / Remarks	Frank Pickersgill previously served with the West Yorkshire Regiment with the service No. 36787. His mother was a washer woman for an unkown family in Scholes. It is recorded that when she was ill she would send her mother to do her work so as not to lose her place with the family who employed her. She was paid 2/6 per day, two and a half times the 1/- the Army paid her son as an infantry private. Prior to the war Frank Pickersgill was a farm labourer, obviously preferring not to follow his stepfather, Benjamin Hill down the pit where he worked as a hewer. A hewer was possibly the most dangerous and certainly the most physically demanding job underground. The hewer did the actual business of cutting the coal out of the seam. Frank Pickersgill had been an only child until after the marriage of his mother and Benjamin Hill during which he gained three half brothers and a half sister.