The son of a British army doctor from an old Cork Protestant family, Freeman Wills Crofts was born on 1 June 1879 in Dublin, Ireland. His father died while on service abroad, and later on his mother married a Church of Ireland clergyman, an archdeacon named Harding. Crofts was sent to school at the Methodist and Campbell College in Belfast. In 1896 his uncle Berkeley D. Wise, at that time chief engineer of the Belfast & Northern Counties Railway, took him on as a civil-engineering apprentice in his department. In 1899 Crofts was made a junior assistant engineer; a year later he became district engineer at Coleraine, where he also served as parish organist. In 1912 he married Mary Bellas Canning. They had no children. Their union, which was a harmonious and happy one, lasted until Croft's death. Crofts was promoted to the position of chief assistant engineer and moved to Belfast in 1923.

He...