3rd (Reserve) Battalion, Gloucestershire Regiment
Tom Franklin (who may have been known as ‘Peter’) was born around July 1897 at Ashleworth, Gloucestershire; he was baptised on 26 September 1897. His parents were Thomas Franklin (a farm labourer) and his wife Clara. According to the 1911 Census the couple had nine children and Tom was the fifth child, second eldest of the five boys. The family lived at Mere-End, Ashleworth.
Tom would have been liable for conscription upon reaching his eighteenth birthday and was likely to have been mobilised in August 1915. He was posted to the 3rd (Reserve) Battalion of the Gloucestershire Regiment (and given the number 26474) and would have undergone a programme of training at Gravesend in Kent, before being sent overseas upon reaching the age of nineteen. He never reached that stage, as he died on 25 February 1916, aged eighteen and a half, at a military hospital in Gravesend. According a funeral report, published in the Gloucestershire Chronicle of 4 March, he died of double pneumonia after a brief illness.
Private Tom Franklin’s remains were conveyed to Gloucester by rail and he was buried in Ashleworth New Burial Ground with semi-military honours on 29 February 1916. A private headstone, in the form of a stone cross, was erected over his grave.
Researched by Graham Adams 13 March 2020