More details have emerged about the Boer War soldier who wrote an historic letter to Huddersfield.
And they relate to a triple tragedy.
Details of Trooper Frank Lewin’s letter emerged when it was included in a catalogue of auction lots.
The letter was written to Huddersfield patent agent Thomas Barron while he was on active service in South Africa during the Boer War in 1900.
Now it has emerged that Trooper Lewin survived the horrors of the Boer War only to be hit by family tragedy.
On July 26, 1906, after returning to Britain from the Boer War, he married sweetheart, Ida Williams. They had two children Elsie and Roy. But in 1911 Ida was a patient at a TB sanatorium in Llanbedr, Wales, and she died at home in Halifax, in January 1912, at the age of 27. Elsie and Roy both died in infancy.
Not long after Ida’s death, Mr Lewin fell in love with a Scarborough barmaid named Elizabeth Winkfield, who was 14 years younger that him. They married on October 4, 2013, and went on to have four sons.
Mr Lewin went to war again and from 1916 he fought in France in the First World War as a temporary captain with the West Yorkshire Regiment.
He survived that war, too, returning to live in Ventnor Terrace, Halifax. He died in Halifax on March 27,1957, at the age of 77.
The Boer War letter is up for auction in London on March 12.
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