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Pioneer surgeon helped POW face the world again

2/ 8/2008

A FORMER Rochdale soldier, who was injured and taken prisoner during the First World War, is featured in some fascinating detective work by an archivist who is studying the work of pioneering facial surgeon Sir Harold Gillies and the Great War servicemen he treated.

The soldier is question is Frank Whipp, who Paddy Hartley, artist in residence at the Gillies Archive, Queen Mary’s Hospital, Sidcup, believes may have had some connection with the Castleton switchgear works of Whipp and Bourne.

The census record from 1901 showed that the Whipp family lived at 98 Rooley Moor Road and the head of the family was Charles Whipp, a pork butcher, whose wife Frances bore him four children, Mary, Edith, Frank and Ann.

Before his military service Frank Whipp became a grocer’s assistant and listed his employer as the president of the Co-operative Society.

He joined the Army in August 1916 and served with the 7th Border Regiment being subsequently injured and taken prisoner in April 1918 during a massive German offensive.

Mr Whipp had received a gun shot wound to his mouth and had complained that the only treatment he had in Germany was to apply insufficient paper bandages to the wound.

On repatriation, he returned to the family home in Rochdale and was eventually placed in the care of Sir Harold Gillies in March 1919 at the plastic surgery unit at the Queen’s Hospital, Sidcup, for reconstructive surgery.

Over the next seven months he underwent three operations to repair his mouth, but his stay in hospital was somewhat lengthened by his contracting broncho-pneumonia and pleurisy from which he eventually recovered.

During his first stay in hospital he was was photographed on the ward playing cards, a picture which stimulated Hartley’s interest, leading him to think that Frank Whipp was a ‘bit of a character’.

Mr Whipp returned to Sidcup in October 1920 for dentures and re-assessment by which time he had decided not to have any more surgery, being finally discharged from the army in November 1920.

But it is at this point that the trail pretty much goes cold.

In the mid 1990s, Andrew Bamji, who runs the Gillies Archive, received a letter and package from Frank Whipp’s daughter, Barbara Hilton, containing letters to and from Frank during his imprisonment in Germany.

She also told the tale of her father visiting a dentist in 1946 complaining of a sore spot high up in the arch of his mouth near his nostril.

The dentist examined the area and, to his amazement, was able to extract a tooth which had been embedded there for nearly 30 years as a result of his war injury.

Mr Hartley, who has been working with the Gillies Archive curator for the past five years, makes uniform sculptures representing the individual surgical and personal stories of a handful of the 5,000 First World War servicemen treated by Gillies.

The project is called Project Facade and funded by the Wellcome Trust.

He said: "Over the years I’ve become more interested in the post-surgery lives and experiences of the men and as the century of the outbreak, battles and end of the First World approaches, I feel this is a great opportunity to gain some kind of acknowledgement for the men who survived the war and were brave enough to undergo the new facial surgery Gillies developed through necessity.

"Men such as Frank Whipp of Rochdale."

The work Mr Hartley has done has been on display at the National Army Museum in London, as well as in Germany, New York and Sydney.

If anyone can help Mr Hartley with more information about Frank Whipp, or his descendants, they can contact him at www.projectfacade.com.