What do you know about Huddersfield Town’s Fred Bullock?
Our #AskExaminer question was posed by a customer of the Slubbers Arms pub on Halifax Old Road who had heard that a former Town captain had once been the pub’s landlord.
Frederick Edwin Bullock, born in 1886 in London, was a big defender who joined Town in 1910, became captain and stayed 11 seasons.
He lost part of his career to the First World War, where he saw action at Delville Wood and Guillemont on the Somme with the 1st Football Battalion, the 17th Middlesex.
Lance Corporal Bullock was wounded in the shoulder and injured in the knee after an accident in 1918.
After the war he returned to captain Huddersfield Town and supported fundraising to save the club after its chairman announced plans to merge with Leeds United.
In 1919, Bullock captained Town to promotion from Division 2 and in 1920 was captain when Huddersfield were beaten 1-0 by Aston Villa - also captained by a returned soldier - in the FA Cup final.
Sadly, he was forced to retire from football in 1922, although it is not clear whether this was caused by injury or illness.
He then became landlord of the Slubbers Arms, running the pub with his wife Maude.
Tragedy struck in November 1922 when Maude came downstairs to discover her husband, 36, had collapsed. Next to him was a beer bottle which Maude had used to store ammonia.
When Maude spoke, he managed to say: “Ammonia. A great mistake! A great mistake!”
An inquest heard Bullock had been suffering “nerve troubles”. It wasn’t clear whether he had taken the ammonia on purpose or by accident but the coroner believed it was deliberate.
A newspaper reported: “The Coroner...said he thought he must have taken it by design, and, as was often the case, must immediately have realised it was a very great mistake to have made, and been very sorry indeed.”
In The Life and Times of Herbert Chapman, author Patrick Barclay says Bullock may have been suffering the after effects of his war years.
“Maybe Fred Bullock had not truly survived the war; Frank Buckley, an early enlister in the Football Battalion, was later to estimate that 500 of its 600 members were dead by the early 1930s, those who escaped the bombs and bullets having fallen to the lingering effects of gas inhalation or other injuries or suffering from depression.”
Running the pub with his wife Maude, Bullock “may have felt on the margins of his former life in football”.
Barclay says: “The funeral was attended by (Herbert) Chapman (Town manager) and the entire squad. The town had lost a treasure.”
- Do you have a question for Ask Examiner? email: andrew.robinson@trinitymirror.com
