Died aged 22. 23 May 1894 – 24 Aug 1916.
Private 19532, Somerset Light Infantry. 1st Bn attd. 1st Bn. Wiltshire Regiment.
Reginald was born on the 23rd May 1894 at 14 Railway Street, Newport, Monmouthshire. He was the son of Frank Burrough (a compositor) and his wife Ellen (nee Markham). All official paperwork records his name as Burrough, but he is recorded on both Dunster war memorial plaques as Burroughs.
When the 1901 census was taken, 6 year old Reginald was living with parents Frank (44, a compositor) and Ellen, and siblings Florence (4), and Wilfred (1) at 7, Queens Hill, Newport, Monmouthshire. The family had a domestic servant, 17-year-old Ethel Morris, and two boarders Arthur and Alec Westmoreland, aged 11 and 9.
Tragically, when he was 19 years old, Reginald’s mother Ellen died aged 47 of breast cancer which had spread to her liver, cachexia and heart failure, on the 15th February 1903 at the County Hospital, Newport. The family at that time were living at 27 Marlborough Road, Newport.
His father Frank married Blanche Giffin in 1906, and their son Leslie Gordon Burrough (a half-brother to Reginald) was born in 1908.
The next census, in 1911, finds Reginald aged 16, working as a farming apprentice and living with farmer William Harris and family at Pen N Hone Farm Caerleon, Llangattock, Monmouthshire. Reginald’s father Frank, step-mother Blanche and siblings were still in Newport, and there was a new addition to the family since the last census – Leslie, aged 3. Frank was a linotype operator (newspaper printing).
How Reginald came to be in Taunton remains a mystery, but he enlisted there, and began his military life as Private 19532, in the Somerset Light Infantry.
Reginald was killed in action aged 22 in France and Flanders on 24 August 1916. At the time of his death he was 1st Bn Somerset Light Infantry, attd. 1st Bn. Wiltshire Regiment. From Dunster Museum: At the time of his death he was part of the 1st Battalion, Somerset Light Infantry, was with the 11th Brigade in the 4th Division of the VIII Corps of the Fourth Army (New Army) based in the Somme. 1st Battalion fought in The Battle of Albert between 1 – 13 July 1916. This was the opening phase of the British and French offensive that became The Battle of the Somme. It is likely that he was injured during this battle and died of his wounds a month later as his battalion did not fight in August.
Reginald is commemorated on Pier and Face 2A of the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme (France), and on the plaques in St George’s Church and on the Memorial Hall in Dunster, Somerset. I have not yet discovered Reginald’s connection to Dunster; perhaps one of his ancestors or siblings moved there.
