Grandparents

Fred’s paternal grandparents were William and Elizabeth Hough. William was born in Knutsford about 1826. Elizabeth was also born in Knutsford about 1825. In 1871 they lived at 2 Ladybarn Avenue and William was a day gardener and Elizabeth a laundress. In 1881 they lived at 34 Ladybarn Lane and William was a gardener and domestic servant. Elizabeth was not working. They had 4 children, all born in Withington. The oldest, Peter Jackson, was Fred’s father. Thomas (born about 1860) and William (born about 1862) became gardeners and domestic servants. Sarah, born about 1864, became a laundress.

Fred’s maternal grandmother was Elizabeth Garnett, probably born about 1849. She had a daughter, Mary Hannah Garnett in 1866. The Garnett family is difficult to describe with certainty. They appear to have been a farming family in the Northenden area.

Parents

Fred’s father was Peter Jackson Hough, born in Withington about 1857. He was baptised on 31 May 1857. In 1871 he was 14 and a warehouse boy. In 1881 he was 23 and a commercial traveller (trimmings). On 21 August he married Ann Garnett at St Wilfred’s church, Northenden. He was living in Fallowfield and she in Northenden, where she was a school teacher. He was 26 and she was 24. We believe that Ann was a cousin of Peter’s second wife. There is no record of Ann’s father in the marriage documentation. In 1891, Peter and Ann lived at 91 Northen Grove. Peter was a commissions agent. They had 5 children aged between a month and 6 years. In the household were also a monthly nurse and someone running errands. The term monthly nurse refers to an unqualified woman who looks after another woman following a birth. Some time after the 1891 census Ann died.

Peter married Mary Hannah Garnett, probably a cousin of Ann, at Christ Church on 18 April 1896.

Mary was 29, a spinster, and we found no record of her father. She was born on 23 February 1866 and baptised at the cathedral in Manchester on 22 April 1866. At the baptism her mother, Elizabeth, was described as a spinster. In 1901 the couple lived at 17 Northen Grove with the 5 children from Peter’s first marriage and Fred, aged 3. In 1904, Peter became a freemason in the Townley Parker Lodge. In 1911 the family lived at 174 Palatine Rd, West Didsbury, with 4 children and Ann’s mother, Sarah Garnett, aged 88. Peter and the oldest son, Harry, 25, were working in dress trimmings and buttons. Bessie, 23, was an elementary school teacher.

Peter died in 1919.

Fred

Fred was born in Didsbury on 21 January 1897. He attended William Hulme’s Grammar School from January 1909 to July 1913. He played cricket in Gaskell House. He later became an ordinary seaman and gunner in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, service number Mersey Z/2101.

On 10 October 1918 he was aboard the RMS (Royal Mail Service) Leinster, a 3069 ton packet steamship built by Lairds of Birkenhead in 1895 at a cost of £95,000. The ship was sailing from Kingstown (now Dun Laoghaire) to Holyhead when she was torpedoed by German submarine UB-123. Aboard her were 77 crew, more than 100 British civilians, 22 postal workers, nurses from various countries and almost 500 military personnel from the Army, Navy and Air Force. Over 500 of those aboard perished, including Fred. His body was recovered and buried in the Grangegorman Military Cemetery, Dublin, CE New Plot 759. He is remembered on the Old Hulmeians War Memorial. One of his older brothers was a captain in the Intelligence Department.