Arthur was born in 1881 to William and Ellen Brown and was baptised at St Mary’s Woodham Ferrers on 21st October of that year. At the time of the 1891 census, the family, including three younger sisters, was living at The Street, Woodham Ferrers.
Arthur, at the time employed as a carman (a driver of a horse drawn vehicle delivering goods) by Smith and Grey of Southend, at the age of 17 years and 9 months, joined the 4th Battalion, Essex Regiment on 21st May 1898 at Warley. The 4th Essex was a part time militia battalion. At the time he was described as 5ft 3” tall, 113 lbs and had no distinguishing marks and his service number was 7165.
Having tasted service in the militia he must have decided he liked army life and on 13th August of that year he signed up on a short service with the King’s Royal Rifle Corps aged 18 and now sporting a tattoo of an eagle on a shield on his left forearm. His service number was 1068.
He served initially with 3rd battalion but transferred to the 1st on 13th May 1899. At the outbreak of the Second Anglo-Boer War on 11th October 1899 the battalion was at Belfast in Natal and, following an attack by Boer battalions on 20th October, were involved in heavy fighting.
The battalion was involved in several engagements before the war ended on 31st May 1902 including the Defence of Ladysmith where Arthur received a severe bullet wound to his throat. The records indicate that this took place on 6th January 1900 when Boer Commandos attacked Wagon Hill in the early hours, to the south of Ladysmith. The British lost 175 dead and 249 wounded including Arthur during the action but the Boers were eventually driven back later in the day.
For his service in South Africa he received the Queen’s South Africa Medal 1899-1901 with clasps for Belfast, Cape Colony, Orange Free State, Talana, Laing’s Nek and The Defence of Ladysmith. He also received the King’s South Africa Medal with clasps for 1901 and 1902.
Arthur left South Africa with the battalion in September 1902 and served in Malta from 22nd September until 26th February 1905 when it moved to Cyprus from 27th February until 13th March 1906 when he was listed as army reserve. He was discharged from the reserve on 12th August 1910.
He married Alice Lavinia Towles at Purleigh Church in 1910 and by 1911 they were living at Edwins Hall Cottages, Crows Lane, Woodham Ferrers and Arthur was employed as a cowman on the farm. In 1914 their son William Henry was born and he was baptised on 26th April at St Mary’s Church, Woodham Ferrers.
Along with thousands of other men Arthur volunteered and joined the 2nd Battalion, Essex Regiment and was sent to the Western Front 7th April 1915.
The second battalion, part of 12th Infantry Brigade, 4th Division had landed in August 1914 as part of the British Expeditionary Force and had already fought in several battles on the Western Front. By the time that Arthur joined them they were serving in the Ypres Salient. Ypres is now known as Iepres but was then referred to as Wipers by the troops.
The second battle of Ypres, noted as the first time the Germans used gas, in this case chlorine, was fought between 22nd April and 25th May. Arthur was killed in action on 2nd May. His body was never identified and he is commemorated along with more than 54,000 other unidentified Commonwealth soldiers killed in the Ypres Salient before 16th August 1917 at the Menin Gate, Ypres.
The 2nd May, the date of Arthur’s death, was the first time that the battalion experienced a gas attack. Arthur died less than four weeks after entering the western front and he was awarded the 1914-15 Star, The Allied Victory Medal and The British War Medal, a group popularly referred to as Pip, Squeak and Wilfred.
He was survived by his widowed mother, his wife Alice and his infant son William. Alice subsequently married Stanley Cook in 1919. No death has been discovered for William senior but there is a William Brown aged 53 born Woodham Ferrers listed as single and a labourer an inmate of the Workhouse in Hoo, Kent in 1911.