BORN HULL 1895. SON OF ROBERT JOHN MATHER AND ELIZABETH MATHER, 2 RICHMOND TERRACE, WATERLOO STREET AND THIS ARMY ADDRESS. SECOND OF SIX CHILDREN. WAS A SINGLE MAN. WORKED AS A GROCER’S ASSISTANT AND SHIP STEWARD. ENLISTED IN HULL ON 16/2/1916. HIS PHYSIQUE IS DESCRIBED AS ONLY ‘FAIR’ AND HIS TEETH NEED ATTENTION, BUT THIS IS THEN AMENDED TO SATISFACTORY. PRESUMABLY RECRUITS WERE BADLY NEEDED. HE JOINED 12TH EYR IN FRANCE ON 07/07/1916. KILLED IN ACTION 13/11/1916, AGED 21. HIS NAME WAS LISTED ON NICHOLSON/EXCHANGE/TUNIS STREET MEMORIAL.
Hull Pals Memorial Post. PRIVATE FRANK MATHER 14/224. Born in 1895 Frank was one of six children to Robert and Elizabeth Mather of 23 Ripon Grove, Brunswick Avenue, Hull. A Steward by trade he was conscripted and attested at City Hall on 16th February 1916 joining the 14th Battalion East Yorkshire Regiment. After four short months of training he arrived in France on 18th June and was immediately transferred to the 12th. His first taste of the war was the Somme. He must have been wholly unprepared for what he saw. The tens of thousands dead, the hundreds of thousands limping back wounded, the legless and armless, those simply bleeding to death on stretchers for want of an available surgeon. In truth, though his new comrades had been in it from the start, none of them were prepared for it because nothing like it had happened before. Frank was killed in action during the last attack of that doomed campaign, at Beaumont Hamel on the 13th November 1916. He is buried in Euston Road Cemetery; he was 21 years old.
Mather, Frank W.
First name:
FRANK W.
Military Number:
14/244
Rank:
Private
Date Died
13/11/1916
Place died:
Euston Road Cemetery, Colincamps, Somme, France
Age:
21
