Frederick James Goodman was born in 1878 the son of William and Esther Goodman of Back Lane, Chipping Norton, one of eleven children.   In 1901 he was lodging in Thame where he worked as a rope maker at Putmans.

He married Ellen Carter White, a widow, at St Mary’s Church, Thame in the summer of 1902, living at 15 Southern Road Thame.  Prior to the war, he lived in Summertown, Oxford with his two children, Charles and Ivy, and stepson Henry and worked as a tent maker.

Frederick James Goodman enlisted with the Oxfordshire & Buckinghamshire Light Infantry in 1915, service number 15728. He embarked for France with the 6th Battalion, D Company, on the 22nd July 1915, and after trench familiarisation and training, the battalion was engaged in various actions on the Western front in 1916, including Mount Sorrell, near Ypres, and Delville Wood on the Somme.

He was killed in action on 3rd September 1916, aged 38, the first day of the battle at Guillemont during the Somme offensive, the battalion as a whole suffering almost 300 casualties on that day.

He is commemorated on the Thiepval memorial for soldiers with no known grave. Although he lived and worked in Thame for several years, Private Frederick James Goodman, is not presently remembered on any memorial in Thame.