Francis H Thornthwaite DSO MC (1890 - 1940)

Born Feb 1890 in Launceston, Tasmania

Died 13 Aug 1940 at age 50 in Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia

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Biography

Ten Journeys to Cameron’s Farm

Lieutenant Colonel Francis Thornthwaite, ^[1] who had driven out to the aerodrome with the Army Minister, had been a career artillery officer with a distinguished record in the Great War. Recalled to service just before the German invasion of Poland, he was now a General Staff Officer I in the Department of the Army, assigned as Army Liaison Officer attached to the Department of Defence Co-ordination. In practice he was the Chief of the General Staff’s right-hand man.
Born in Launceston in February 1890, Francis Thornthwaite was the son of William Wright Thornthwaite, an immigrant from Manchester who had married Frances (Fanny) Stackhouse, only daughter of the rector of Longford, the Rev. Alfred Stackhouse of the Tasmanian early-settler family, in 1885.
William Thornthwaite, almost blind from a childhood accident, was a leading light in Tasmanian musical circles. After training in London in piano, organ, and singing he had arrived in Hobart in 1880 and began at once advertising his services as a music teacher. Soon appointed organist at Hobart’s St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church he moved to Launceston in 1884 as organist at St John’s, then to Paterson Street Methodist Church, eventually becoming Launceston City Organist, conductor of the Launceston Philharmonic Society, and founder of the local branch of the Trinity College of Music . . . more . . anu.edu

Friends and War
. . . . and . . . . Within weeks of the outbreak of war, all Inez’s male Australian friends were volunteering. Alex Russell was soon in uniform. Ivo Whitton, the brilliant young golfer, was returning to Australia to enlist in the AIF. Although there were fears about the safety of sea travel, and it took some time to secure passages, Alice Currie and Inez, urged by her cousin Gyp, set sail for home on RM S Orontes on October 9. Somewhere in the Indian Ocean, as Orontes steamed on towards Australia, the AIF’s First Division Artillery with Lieutenant Frank Thornthwaite, was en route to Egypt in the Argyllshire. Among her relatives, friends, and neighbours no family was untouched by the war. Sons and brothers, cousins, uncles, even fathers, were rushing to the colours.
No sooner had she reached home than Inez was in conversation with Esther Fairbairn, whose brother Jim at Geelong Grammar was determined to get to England to join his older brother Osborne in the Royal Flying Corps. Anxious to ‘do their bit’, the young Currie girls, with Esther Fairbairn and Catherine Austin, raised over £1000 by subscription early in 1915 for the purchase in London for the Red Cross of two ‘Western District Motor Ambulances’. Inez herself was a whirlwind of charitable endeavour, organising a concert and auction for the Belgian Relief Fund, donating personally and publicly to the British Red Cross Society Australian branch and the Victorian Red Cross Fund for Sick and Wounded Soldiers.16 By the second year of hostilities, both Inez and Gyp Currie were in London with Esther Fairbairn making their own contribution to the war effort. . . . .

• AWM - Photo and Description 8 - 1918

Sources

1. ↑ 11. Best man: Frank Thornthwaite

• http://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p263591/html/ch11.xhtml?referer=&page=17#