Dorothy Fryer
- Family History
- Military History
- Extra Information
- Photographs
Dorothy Fryer was an attractive and personable Worksop girl living with her coal miner father Harry, mother Annie and brother Norman at 18, Stubbin Lane Worksop. Aged 20 in 1939, Dorothy worked at the rather upmarket dress shop of Rowells on Bridge Street. At the outbreak of war, she volunteered to become a telephonist at the Worksop A.R.P. Control Room. Dorothy became engaged to Burley Higgins. Like Burley she was a keen athlete and a particularly good swimmer. She could look forward to a fulfilled life but her fiancé, a 253 Sqdn Hurricane pilot, was killed in action on September 14th 1940. As Dorothy recovered from the loss of Burley, she eventually formed an association with a young builder from George Street Worksop named Matt McCarrick.
Dorothy joined up in the A.T.S. in January 1942 being attached to the York based 497 Battery,207 H.A.A. Regiment of the Royal Artillery. On her first leave she was traveling in Matt’s Morris 8 saloon car, with a friend Mary Scott from the baking family of Newcastle Avenue. It was in February 1942 and the blackout regulations applied. Travelling towards their destination of Edwinstowe just after passing the Lion Gates on the Ollerton Road Matt’s Morris ran into the rear of a broken-down Churchill tank. Matt suffered facial injuries but remained conscious and Mary’s ankle was sprained. Dorothy was knocked unconscious and appears to have been trapped between the front seats. The soldiers from the tank endeavoured to warn other traffic of the danger and to help get Dorothy out of the Morris but their warning efforts were to no avail as a Portland Autos single deck service bus on the weekly service from Worksop to Clumber and Hardwick, ran into the back of the Morris and crushed it against the rear of the tank. Dorothy’s skull was fractured in two places and her brain became detached. Obviously, she died immediately on the spot from this second collision although it was known that although not conscious, she was still alive after the first collision. The force of the collision can be judged by the serious internal injuries caused to the bus driver, Kenneth Marsh with nine of the bus passengers taken to hospital, including two with fractured bones. The subsequent main inquest held on 17 March at the Potter Street Police Station in Worksop by the County District Coroner, local solicitor Eliot G. Warburton, established that it was pitch black at the time of the accident, that the Morris car showed the limited lights allowed by the blackout regulations and that the red rear light of the tank was showing. However, in response to a question from Arnold Furniss, solicitor for Matt McCarrick, Sgt Knight a member of the tank crew, confirmed that this light was only the size of a pea. Because of his injuries, Kenneth Marsh was not called to give evidence. A verdict of accidental death was recorded.
On 18 February the funeral service was held at the Worksop Priory Church, where Dorothy had been a worshipper, with the interment taking place at the Retford Road Cemetery at Manton. The grave is marked by a Commonwealth War Graves Commission headstone. Harry and Annie Fryer had the words ‘CHERISHED MEMORIES OF DOROTHY R.I.P.’ carved on the headstone. In the late forties and the early fifties, Robert Ilett occasionally came across Harry Fryer at the Worksop Cricket Club and always noticed his sad appearance. He now knows why. Dorothy Fryer was recognised as being a fatal casualty of war. The only Worksop woman to suffer this fate but her name does not appear on the St Anne’s Wayside Memorial, although she lived close to the church. Dorothy Fryer’s story was researched and written by Robert Ilett.
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