As the casualties from Salford began to mount in the carnage of the First World War, the Salford City Reporter of November 1915 reported the death of Frank Howarth, 36, the third son of millionaire mill owner George Howarth.
Howarth’s factory on Ordsall Lane opened in 1872 and was known as Ordsall Mills, and later as ‘Dickie Howarth’s’.
At its height the company employed around 4000 people, many of them women and young girls, in their cotton mills and weaving sheds across Salford.
Inside Howarth’s Mill © Invisible Histories/WCML
Public school-educated Frank enlisted as soon as the war started in 1914 and joined the Fife and Forfar Yeomanry – surprisingly as a Private rather a commissioned officer – and in fact he was so keen it was reported that he took his own horse with him!
Details of his death are scant but we learn that he was shot by an enemy sniper on 18 October 1915 whilst at a listening post in France.
Many tributes are paid to him in the article: we learn that he was educated at Bilton Grange School and Cheltenham College, while much emphasis is placed on his love of outdoor pursuits and his kind and caring attitude towards animals.
He was known to stop and berate owners he thought were ill-treating their horses and could not stand seeing any kind of violence or malice towards them.
Respected in business too, he became a Director of Richard Howarth and Company Limited and had sole charge of the Doubling Department of the Ordsall Mill.
Howarth’s Mill © Invisible Histories/WCML
The paper reports that Frank was held in high regard by all of the workforce and was well known for his acts of charities including helping to fund the Manchester and Salford Girls Institute, a charitable organisation for underprivileged children.
Each Christmas he would organise for huge hampers of food to be sent to which included, bacon, sides of ham, lamb, ducks, geeese, turkey, vegetables, oranges, apples and fresh flowers so that nobody would go hungry at that time of year.
On one occasion he paid for 13 young girls to go on a holiday to the Isle of Man for the August Bank Holiday: a grand gesture, as only the minority of families in Salford at the turn of the century could afford a holiday at the seaside.
One of his other brothers, Corporal Gordon M. Haworth, joined the Royal Engineers in August 1914 and was wounded at the Battle of Loos in September 1915. At the time Frank was shot by the sniper Gordon was recuperating at the Lord Derby Hospital, Winwick, near Warrington.
It would appear that death had no respect for age, rank or social position, and as the war continued to rage it would continue to decimate future generations in Salford.
