Missing without a trace c.WW1...
QI’m trying to find the date and place of death of my Grandfather Frederick James Greetham born 1878 in Clapham Surrey. I have information about him up until the 1911 Census but after that nothing, except on my mother’s marriage certificate he is listed as deceased. Doris married Horace Dowdell Gray in 1928 in Reigate, Surrey. I have been through military records and war grave records but found nothing.
His wife Ethel was in a psychiatric hospital and the two children Doris and Gwen were both at a special school (Doris being my mother).
My mother never spoke about her parents not even to my two brothers, and I found out a little while ago that Ethel died in 1950 when I was 10 years old, in a psychiatric institution in Epsom, Surrey.
If you could help with this puzzle as has been suggested I would be most grateful.
Michael Gray
A When searching for a man who goes missing post the 1911 Census, then it is natural to wonder whether this is on account of the First World War. It is worth bearing in mind, however, that only about a quarter of men between the ages of 18 and 42 were in uniform during the First World War. Many men could not join up because they were unfit to serve, because of disability or chronic illness. My wife’s grandfather, for example, did not enlist because the medical officer found a tubercular shadow on his lungs. He lived to the age of 96. Unlike the Second World War there was no system of reserved occupations, where men with particular skills needed in the war economy, were not allowed to enlist. However, it was increasingly recognised that miners, chemists and men in other trades were needed more at home than in the trenches.
In March 1916, men over 18 could be conscripted into the services. Initially it was just single men who were called up, but it was soon extended to married men as well. You could appeal against your call up to local military service tribunals. The vast majority of cases concerned employment (such
