John Roberts Fozzard

Frank “was born at 38, Canterbury Road, Leyton and educated at Canterbury Road School, Leyton, and the Leyton County High School, along with his cousins Ernest and Douglas. He spent the 2nd World War in the Royal Army Medical Corps, serving in all the countries from India to Italy. He was taken prisoner on the Anzio beachhead in February 1944 and spent fourteen months as a prisoner of war in Italy and Germany. When he eventually came out of the Army he was fortunate enough to obtain a Government Further Education grant and went to London University, where he took his B.Sc. (and later his Ph.D.) in Geology.

“He was taken on to the staff of his own college (Queen Mary College) and remained there for the rest of his working life, gradually rising through the ranks of Assistant Lecturer, Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, University Reader and finally Emeritus Reader. He loved his job, as he always got on well with students, and went on working until he was 76. From 1981 until 2004 he was Chairman of ACE Residents' Association, the residents' association covering the whole of his part of Woodford.

“In his first week at the College he met fellow student Florence Fozzard (9th February 1919- ), from Oldham, and they were married in 1949. Florence had spent the war years as Secretary, Bursar and Assistant Matron at a boys' boarding school in her native Oldham and had come to College as a mature student. Afterwards she had a variety of jobs, mainly secretarial, including being Personal Secretary to the man who ran the National Industrial Relations Court, and she finished up by being an Inspector in the Department of Health and Social Security until she retired at the age of sixty.”

Frank Middlemiss online notes