Friends

Of

Hastings

Cemetery

This is an example of how the war continued to affect the lives of men and their families long after the fighting had ended.  Arthur Matthews epitaph records that he was a private in the Royal Army Medical Corps and that he died of injuries received in the Great War.  In fact he died in the Spring of 1930 at the age of 48.

Arthur Matthews was born in 1882 in Bledlow Ridge, Buckinghamshire.  His father was a schoolmaster and in 1891 the family was living in the School House in Great Milton, Oxfordshire. It seemed to be a family ‘business’ – in addition to his father William A. Matthews, who was a certificated teacher of Elementary School, his older sister Eleanor at the age of 13 was a school monitress.  Arthur himself was still at school, although he later became a teacher as well.  His father was born c1852 in Bradford, Wiltshire and his mother Annie came from Somerset.

In 1909 Arthur married Agnes Irene Crummock, a teacher, in Doncaster, although she originally came from Barrow in Cheshire.  By 1911 they were living in Haringey, where he was employed by London County Council as an assistant school master.  As women teachers had to resign on marriage his wife was not working, although the census records that she is ‘at home, working on own account’ so she may have been doing some private tutoring.  They had one servant, 14 year old Mary Neail, from Great Milton in Oxford, perhaps an ex-pupil of his father’s.

Unfortunately no record exists of his army career.  

Buried in same grave is his wife Agnes Irene Matthews, who died on 5th January 1965 at the age of 83 or 85.

BG F26

Arthur William Henry Matthews

Agnes Irene Matthews