DOI: 10.5287/bodleian81y4.1
title: Evan, David and Frank Arthur

description: Photograph of Evan, David and Frank Arthur, brothers.
Left: Pte Evan Arthur, died of pneumonia 1919
Centre: Pte Frank Arthur killed in action Palestine, 1917
Right: Pte David Arthur, Montgomeryshire Yeomanry

Mrs Jones: Pte 290819 Francis (Frank) Arthur, 7th Batt Royal Welch Fusiliers. Killed in action 4 November 1917, Palestine, aged 21. No known grave. Named on the Jerusalem Memorial, Israel. He was the son of Mr and Mrs Francis Arthur of the White House, Maesmawr a gamekeeper for the Maesmawr Estate. Prior to the war Frank Arthur had been employed by Boys and Bodens. He joined up at the outbreak of war and was wounded in the head in the first battle of Gaza [1916?]. In the Montgomeryshire County Times a poem was printed about that battle by Pte JD Morgan (21 July 1917), also submitted as part of this collection. Frank Arthur died in the battle of Gaza 1917. 

A photocopy of Evan Arthur's memoriam card.
A colour photocopy of the Arthur family remembering their beloved ones at a Remembrance day at the war memorial at Guilsfield.
A colour photocopy of a photo of the stone to the memory of Pte Evan Arthur, Guilsfield Cemetery.

Montgomeryshire County Times report (15 March 1919) of the death of Pte 449663 Evan Arthur, Royal Engineers who died at home from pneumonia on 7 March 1919. He was the brother of Frank Arthur of the White House, Maesmawr: Much sympathy is extended to Mr and Mrs Francis Arthur, of 4 Mount Pleasant, Welshpool in the loss of their son Evan who succumbed on Friday to Pneumonia following an attack of flu. Pte Evan Arthur returned home 7 weeks ago from 4 years service abroad. In October 1914 he joined the 1/7th Royal Welch Fusiliers when only 16 years of age subsequently going abroad with the regiment. At the time of landing in Sulfa Bay he was taken ill and entered hospital, after recovering was engaged in several battles.

Mrs Jones: The huge epidemic of Influenza affected the whole of the British Isles in 1919 and many personnel who had gone through enormous hardships and fought in various battles throughout the duration of the 1914-1918 war were struck down with this virulant illness to which thousands succumbed to in the year of 1919 of which Pte Evan Arthur was one. 

These images are a sample from a folder of research undertaken by Mrs Jones into the men named on the war memorial (1914-1919) of Guilsfield parish (near Welshpool, Montgomeryshire - now Powys, in Wales). The names include: Frank Arthur, Ernest Charlton, Edward Evans, Robert Evans, Fred Evans, Charles Galliers, Robert Gainsford, Edward Griffiths,John Higgins, Edwin Jones, James Jones, Charles Jones, William Jones, Alan Langlands, Edward Lloyd, John Lloyd, Richard Morgan, Edward Morris, John Owen, Evan Phillips, Herbert Trevor, David E. Bailey, Herbert Bailey, Arthur Gough, Charles Jones, George R. Jones, Arthur T. Lewis, Mathew W.H. Morris, Richard D.H. Mytton, Gruffydd V. Trevor. Representing a number of regiments of the army, also the Royal Navy and the Royal Flying Corps. Also evident is the volunteers who joined up early in the war, as well as the tribunals which decided that even though farming was a reserved occupation that man-power being so scarce some men would be compelled to join the army, leaving their families, their aging fathers, mothers, sisters and younger siblings to continue to provide food for the war effort - an insight into the home-front in rural Wales.