PRIVATE ARTHUR H JACKSON
EAST YORKSHIRE REGIMENT
18TH AUGUST 1916 AGE 36
BURIED: LE TOURET MILITARY CEMETERY, RICHEBOURG-L'AVOUE, FRANCE
Sometimes it is the simplest words that are the most moving - "I love him still". This is what Mrs Betsy Jackson, Private Jackson's mother, wanted to say on his headstone and this is what she did say.
Life does not appear to have been easy for Betsy Jackson. In the 1881 census she is the wife of Samuel Jackson, agricultural labourer, and the mother of two children, William and Arthur. In the 1891 census, William and Arthur are inmates of the workhouse in Driffield, Yorkshire, whilst Betsy and her eight-year-old daughter, Alice, are living in North Dalton where Betsy is a charwoman and the head of the household. Betsy is still a charwoman in 1901 and she and Alice are still living in North Dalton but unmarried Alice is the mother of an eight-month-old son, Arthur E Jackson. And in 1911 Alice is in the Driffield workhouse having given birth to another son two days earlier.
None of this is an attempt to pass judgement but just to show how things were in the Jackson family - not easy. When the war broke out William Jackson joined the navy and Arthur the 13th Battalion the East Yorkshire Regiment, the 3rd Hull's Pals, which was formed in August 1914. After training the regiment went to Egypt in December 1915 and were then transferred to France in May 1916, where Arthur was killed three months later.