Tompsett, William
Private
No. L/6847, 2nd Battalion, Royal Sussex Regiment
Killed in action on Friday 30 October 1914 (aged 30)
Buried:
Tyne Cot Cemetery, Belgium (Grave LXVII. H. I)
Commemorated:
Commonwealth War Graves Commission
Comber and District War Memorial
Comber Parish Church of Ireland Church (St Mary’s)
BIOGRAPHY
William Tompsett was born in 1884 in Eastbourne, Sussex and he was the only son of George and Mary Tompsett. He had five sisters – Mabel, Alice, Lucy, Ethel and Lizzie.
William Tompsett worked as a bricklayer all along the south coast of England until he joined the Royal Sussex Regiment at Lewes on 24 June 1902. He was posted to Ireland and on 5 November 1907 William Tompsett and Mary McCutcheon were married in St Anne’s Church of Ireland Church Belfast. William Tompsett (aged 23) was a Private in the Sussex Regiment stationed at Victoria Barracks in Belfast and he was a son of George Tompsett, an architect. Mary McCutcheon (aged 25) was a factory worker from High Street, Comber and she was a daughter of James McCutcheon, a butcher.
William and Mary Tompsett lived with Mary’s widowed mother, Catherine McCutcheon, in The Square, Comber and later in Glen Road, Comber.
William and Mary Tompsett (nee McCutcheon) had at least three sons:
John (born 24 May 1908 in High Street, Comber)
William George (born 15 May 1910 in The Square, Comber)
Unnamed male (born 1 August 1912)
Private William Tompsett was posted to France on 31 August 1914 and was killed in action two months later, on 30 October 1914, during the First Battle of Ypres. At the time of his death, William’s parents were living at 11 Marshall’s Row, Brighton.
Private William Tompsett (No. L/6847) was buried in the Tyne Cot Cemetery in Belgium and he is commemorated on Comber and District War Memorial and on the Memorial Plaque in Comber Parish Church of Ireland Church (St Mary’s) (surname spelt Thompsett).
Mary McCutcheon Tompsett suffered bereavement again when her brother, Rifleman John McCutcheon, was killed in action on the first day of the Battle of the Somme.