Frank Richard Allsop

Mr Frank Richard Allsop was born in Torquay, Devon, England on 28 November 1868.

He was the son of James Allsop (1827-1917) and Eliza Lanham (1832-1911). 

His father was a native of Tissington, Derbyshire and served as a butler to several wealthy dignitaries. On the 1861 census he was a servant to Lord Digty at Misterne Magna in Dorchester, Dorset and on the 1871 census he is recorded as a butler to F. G. W. Augustus, Lord Politmore, at Poltimore Park in Devon.  He was married to his wife Eliza, a native Suffolk, in London in 1866. Eliza could also boast of her former wealthy employers.

He had one sibling, his elder sister Ellen Emma (b. 1866), who later married in 1901 to railway clearing clerk Francis Robert Hoskins (1843-1914) but had no children.

Frank does not appear with his family on early census records with his father living at one address and his mother in another at different stages; at the time of the 1871 census his mother and sister were living at an address in Lantilio Crossenny, Monmouthshire where Eliza was a housekeeper to a retired army captain. By 1881 she was a domestic cook for a distiller and director of the Bank of England, James P. Currie. By that time his father had begun running a lodging house at 35 South Eaton Place, Belgrave, London but retired sometime before the close of the century and apparently retired to his native Tissington where he remained for the rest of his life. By the time of the 1911 census James Allsop claimed to be widowed when he was living alone in Tissington; his wife was very much still alive and living with her daughter and her husband in Poole, Dorset at 8 South View Villas, however, she died later that year at the age of 79.

When Frank first appears on the 1871 census he is being cared for by his paternal aunt and uncle, Joseph and Hannah Oldry in Chesham, Buckinghamshire. He was later enrolled at the St Saviours Middle Class School in Ardingly, Sussex and he appears here on the 1881 census. Following in his father's footsteps he went into the employ of various wealthy families and is described as a footman to a wealthy widow, Katherine de Barreto and her family, who lived at 20 Park Lane, Mayfair, London, when he appeared on the 1891 census. Elevated to the level of butler by the time of the 1901 census, he was then recorded as a servant at Willesley House, Cranbrook, Kent, the estate of Lord and Lady Adeline Butler. 

Frank was married in London in 1904 to Elizabeth Purdue (b. 4 February 1868); few details of Elizabeth's early life are known although she may have originated in England's northeast. 

Frank and Elizabeth had one child together, their daughter Ellen, also known as "Nellie" who was born in York on 5 October 1904.

Frank was listed on the commercial street directory of Hertfordshire as a business owner at 69 High Street, Great Berkhamsted but the nature of the business is not certain; however, on the 1911 census he and his daughter Ellen appear as lodgers at 83 Alma Road, Southampton and he is described as a wholesale grocer. When he began a seafaring career is unknown.

When he signed on to the Titanic on 10 April 1912 Allsop gave his address as 78 Obelisk Road, Southampton and his previous ship as the Olympic. As a steward, he could expect monthly wages of £3, 15s. 

Frank Richard Allsop died in the sinking and his body, if recovered, was never identified.

His estate worth £69, 13s, 7d, was administered to his widow Elizabeth on 29 June 1912. She and her daughter also benefitted from the Titanic Relief Fund as class D dependents.

Elizabeth never remarried and made her home in Middlesex for much of the rest of her life, later living with her daughter and her family in Staines before she spent her final days in a nursing home in Sundbury, Middlesex where she died on 28 October 1941 at the age of 73.

Frank and Elizabeth's daughter Ellen was married in London in 1935 to Cecil James Secombe Greenslade (b. 15 March 1903), a pharmacist, and they made their home in later years in Ashford, Middlesex. Their son Michael James was born in 1937. Ellen died in Ashford at the age of 53 on 31 December 1957; her widower Cecil died in 1985 whilst her son Michael died in Bristol in 2012.  

Frank's father died on 6 April 1917 aged 89 and Frank is remembered on the family grave in St Mary's Churchyard in Tissington, Derbyshire. It reads:

ALSO OF FRANK RICHARD
SON OF THE ABOVE
JAMES ALLSOP
WHO WAS DROWNDED [sic] ON THE
TITANIC, APRIL 15TH 1912
AGED 43 YEARS
NEARER MY GOD TO THEE