3rd (Reserve) Battalion, Oxfordshire & Buckinghamshire Light Infantry
Private Mathews was a young recruit, who appears to have died from illness or by way of an accident, whilst undertaking basic training. In common with many similar cases, there is very little documentation on his limited Army service.
William Henry Mathews was born at Temple Guiting in the final months of 1897. His parents were William Mathews (1847-1909), a farmer and his wife Eliza Jane (née Bateman: 1869-1948). This couple had married in 1896, when she was 23 years younger than he husband. They had two children, William and his sister Mary E (born 1900).
At the time of the 1901 Census the family lived at Temple Guiting. By the time of the 1911 Census, William (senior) had died and that census records William living with his widowed mother, her sister and the farm bailiff at Ford Farm, near Broadway, Worcestershire. William was then 13.
William would have reached his 18th birthday during the final months of 1915 and therefore would have been subject to conscription, made compulsory by the Military Service Act of March, 1916. His entry in the Register of Soldiers’ Effects (kept at the National Army Museum) indicates that he was not eligible for a gratuity upon the cessation of his military service. Those who had not seen service abroad had to serve more than six moths to become eligible. It would appear that William Mathews was not mobilised until at least the middle of January 1917.
In the absence of sight of a death certificate, the cause of William’s death, on 8 August 1917, aged 19, is not known. It was obviously whilst he was serving as the above Register of Soldiers’ Effects states that it was at Alexandra (Military) Hospital, Cosham. The hospital is located on Portsdown Hill. The 3rd (Reserve) Battalion of the Oxfordshire & Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, to whom he had been posted, had been located in Portsmouth since August 1914.
Private William Henry Mathews was buried in Temple Guiting (St Mary) Churchyard on 13 July 1917. A private stone cross marks his grave and he is commemorated on the Great War Memorial tablet inside St Mary’s Church.
Researched by Graham Adams 19 May 2021