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Name: MATTHEWS, Charles Bertram

Birth Date: 30 Apr 1897 Bromley, Kent

Death Date: 21 May 1942 Porlock, Somerset

First Date: 1921

Profession: Administration

Area: Kisumu

Married: In Kensington 12 Feb 1927 Enid Mary Hoyle b. 17 Sep 1899 Huddersfield, d. 17 Dec 1966 Exmoor

Children: Drummond Hoyle (5 Feb 1931)

Book Reference: KAD, Red 25, Hut, Red 22, Gazette

School: Hazelwood School, Cheltenham College, RMC Sandhurst

General Information:

Gazette 23/3/1921 - Arrived on 1st Appointment - Asst. District Commissioner - 11/3/1921
KAD 1922 - Administration Cadet, Kisumu
Gazette - 9/8/1922 - Voters Register - Lake - Charles Bertram Matthews, Assistant Resident Commissioner, Kisumu
Hazelwood School War Memorial (web): On the 22nd of March 1918, while piloting a Sopwith Camel at 11,000 feet, he was hit in the left leg by a machine gun bullet which broke the bone and severed an artery despite which he managed to land his aircraft. He was sent to the Turner Ward at the London Hospital were he was: - “making splendid recovery from recent wounds” (April 1918).
This injury forced him to resign his army career and he attached himself to Gray’s Inn with a view to the bar. He did not complete this and instead went to work for the Colonial Office in East Africa, successfully passing his examination for the civil service in Kenya on the 4th of February 1921. He resigned this post and returned to read for the bar which he successfully completed in April 1924 at the Inns of Court, being placed in Class 1 (Criminal Law and Procedure). He finished his finals at Oxford in October of the same year. He practised law with his father's firm of G.F. Hudson Matthews & Co of 32 Queen Victoria Street, London EC4.
He was married to Enid Mary (née Hoyle) on the 12th of February 1927 at the Holy Trinity Church, Brompton and they lived at 78 Vanbrugh Park Blackheath in London. They moved later to "Overstream", Porlock in Somerset where he helped run a family riding school and they had a son, Drummond Hoyle, born on the 5th of February 1931.
On the outbreak of the Second World War he was mobilised as a member of the Royal Air Force Reserve of Officers and was commissioned as Pilot Officer 72889 in the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve on the 1st of September 1939. He resigned his commission due to ill health on the 14th of July 1941 and died suddenly at home in Porlock.

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