Name
William James Carter
Conflict
First World War
Date of Death / Age
06/02/1919
Rank, Service Number & Service Details
Colour Sergeant
61193
Bedfordshire Regiment
3rd Bn.
Awards: Service Medals/Honour Awards
Not Yet Researched
Cemetery/Memorial: Name/Reference/Country
REDBOURN (ST. MARY) CHURCHYARD
Redbourn
United Kingdom
Headstone Inscription
No inscription
UK & Other Memorials
Not on the Redbourn memorials, Not on the Markyate memorials
Pre War
William John Carter was born in 1870 in Markyate, Hertfordshire to John, an innkeeper, and Ann Carter.
The 1911 Census shows him as a Colour Serjeant with the Bedfordshire Regiment at Kempston Barracks.
Army Pension records show that he retired from the 1st Bedfordshire Regiment on 27 Jun 1912 as a Colour Serjeant, serial number 2745.
Wartime Service
REDBOURN’S PATRIOTISM - Herts Advertiser - 5th September 1914
Redbourn is showing its patriotism in the most commendable way, viz, in a stirring effort to promote enlistment. Mr. W. Carter, secretary of the Redbourn Cricket Club, an ex-serviceman, is taking the matter vigorously in hand and, mainly as the result of his efforts, twenty-four young men, the majority being agricultural and other labourers, left on Tuesday to join the colours, twenty of them being accepted. Some of them have enlisted in the Regulars.
Report of death – Herts Mercury - 7 Feb 1919
William Carter, of Redbourn, an ex-Sergeant of the Middlesex Regiment, was found dead in a barn near his house yesterday morning. A double-barrel shot gun laid beside his body when discovered. It appeared that he had been dead two or three hours. An inquest will be held to-day.
Inquest report – Herts Mercury – (Inquest on Saturday 8th Feb 1919)
REDBOURN - EX-COLOUR SERGEANT’S SUICIDE. – Dr. Lovell Drage held an inquest at the Old Club Room, Redbourn, on Saturday, touching the death of William John Carter, aged 48, single, Mansdale Cottages, East Common, an army pensioner, who was found lifeless in a barn near his home on the previous Thursday morning with a gunshot wound in his head.
Samuel Woods, ex-engine driver, Mansdale Cottages, whose wife would have been a witness but was too unwell to be present, said at eight o’clock on Thursday morning he passed the time of day with deceased. At eleven o’clock a gun-shot was heard, but witness and his wife attributed it to boys shooting birds in the meadow. At one o’clock the nurse and Dr.Bovill called at deceased’s cottage next door to see Mrs. Dexter, his aunt, with whom he lived, and as they could not see deceased witness went to the barn and found him dead with a gun at his feet and a piece of wire in his right hand. Deceased had not been well lately, but he had not been peculiar in his manner – Charles Carter, contractor’s manager, Finchley, deceased’s brother, said deceased had never to his knowledge showed any signs of mental derangement, and witness knew of no reason why he should have taken his own life. He had been 24 years in the army; he had been called up again to the colours and recently demobilised and had a very good pension as colour sergeant, and had saved money and made investments in war loan stocks and shares, and different things. – William Belshaw, Dr. F.M. Bovill, and P.c. Young having given evidence, a verdict of “Suicide” was returned, the jury adding that there was insufficient evidence to determine deceased’s mental condition.
Acknowledgments
Gareth Hughes
Gareth Hughes, Malcolm Lennox
