Maurice Basil Freeman

Driver, Royal Corps of Signals
2nd Armd. Div. Sigs.
Service number: 2585208
Died 20 Mar 1940
Buried Willesden Jewish Cemetery, United Kingdom
Age 18


Maurice known as Billy was born in April 1921 in Hampstead, London to Belarus born father Harry and London born mother Miriam nee Langleben, and he had an older sister Joyce. In 1921, the family lived at 18 Ferncroft Avenue, Hampstead and Harry worked as a manufacturing silversmith and a dealer in antique silver. The family were wealthy enough to employ a cook, children’s nurse and a domestic servant. The family then moved to 9 Second Avenue, Hove in East Sussex where both Harry and Miriam worked as antique dealers.

Billy was under the age of eighteen when he joined the Army as a driver and at his inquest an officer spoke of him as an exceptionally good soldier.

Billy was killed on the Hodthorpe to Worksop road in Derbyshire whilst riding a private motor cycle. He lost control of the machine at a bend in the road and it ran into a fence where he sustained a fracture of the skull.