Name
Frank Harry Bethell
Conflict
First World War
Date of Death / Age
25/09/1915
19
Rank, Service Number & Service Details
Lieutenant
Connaught Rangers
3rd Bn., attached Royal Irish Regiment
Awards: Service Medals/Honour Awards
Not Yet Researched
Cemetery/Memorial: Name/Reference/Country
YPRES (MENIN GATE) MEMORIAL
Panel 42.
Belgium
Headstone Inscription
Not Researched
UK & Other Memorials
Not on the Bushey memorials
Pre War
Born on 18 May 1896 at Romford Road, Essex, Frank Henry (Harry) Bethell was the eldest of six children of John Henry Bethell and Florence Wyles. His father rose from a humble clerk to an auctioneer and, by around 1886, had entered politics. He served twice as Mayor of East Ham and twice of East Ham.
By the 1901 census, the family was living at 88 Romford Road, West Ham, where his father described himself as a Land Agent & Auctioneer living ‘on his own account’ and employing a nurse, a cook and a maid. In the 1911 census his entries are styled, ‘Bethell, John Henry, Sir, M.P., Bart’ and he became Lord Bethell in about 1912. He was elected as the MP for Romford in 1906 and then East Ham North between 1918 and 1922. He was created Baronet of Romford in Romford in 1911 and raised to the peerage as Baron Bethell in 1922.
Frank was a pupil at Harrow School around this time, entering in the Easter to Midsummer term of 1910.
Wartime Service
Frank enlisted with the 3rd Battalion of the Connaught Rangers on 20 September 1914. He joined the Expeditionary Force on 17 March 1915 and his rank of 2nd Lieutenant was confirmed on 30 May 1915. He was killed in action in France on 25 September 1915, aged 19. Harrow School’s roll of honour includes the following details;
“He was killed on the morning of September 25th, 1915, while leading a charge on the German position at Hooge. The Colonel of the Battalion wrote to his father saying that the trench charged by Lieutenant Bethell had not, through an oversight, been shelled, and that the force led by him was annihilated”
He is remembered with honour in Belgium at the Menin Gate to the Missing and in the House of Commons Book of Remembrance, 1914-1918 at the House of Lords.
Additional Information
Information provided with kind permission of Bushey First World War Commemoration Project – Please visit www.busheyworldwarone.org.uk : also the Harrow School Roll of Honour - Please visit www.harrowschool-ww1.org.uk
Acknowledgments
Andrew Palmer
Dianne Payne - www.busheyworldwarone.org.uk, Jonty Wild
