Norman Walter Franks was born at Norwood, Surrey, in 1864, the son of Walter James Franks, a coal merchant, and his wife Lavinia. In the 1891 census returns he is described as a tea dealer, living at 42 Woodland Road, Lambeth. At some time he went into partnership with Henry Watson Franks (b. 1848/9)—not a brother, but probably a near relation—who had been in the tea business since at least 1881. But on 18 January 1898 it was announced in the London Gazette (p. 329) that the partnership between the two, described as carrying on business as tea dealers at 59 Eastcheap, London, had been dissolved with effect from 30 November the previous year.
Norman Franks, who assumed responsibility for the debts of the firm, continued in business, though its precise nature is unknown, and retained his association with 59 Eastcheap (see PETH 7/67), which was apparently a large building comprising several business premises. He became acquainted with Emmeline Pethick and Mary Neal about the end of the century, having ‘made a home for himself’ in a block adjoining Somerset Terrace (the precise location of this block is unclear). Activated by a desire to give all his leisure to social work, he employed some of the Espérance Club girls in his business and ‘three of them were able to set up house-keeping together in the same block of buildings’ (Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, My Part in a Changing World, p. 113). At the time of the 1901 census Franks was residing at the Rossmore Edwards Settlement in Tavistock Place.
In 1905 Franks married Eliza Caroline Morgan, known as Leila, and they were living together at Flat 3, 89 Elgin Avenue, W., his occupation then being given as china, earthenware, and glass dealer. The couple had at least one son, Glenholme Norman Franks, born in 1915. The family later lived at Harold’s Hill, Churt, near Farnham in Surrey, and they were probably still there at the time of Franks’s death in 1939.