b. 1874 Frant, Sussex. d. 1st Quarter 1935 Uxbridge, Middlesex.
DATE OF EM ACTION: 02/04/1915 Faversham, Kent.
William was the seventh of eight children born to Thomas C and Mary Catherine Bethell. His father was a bailiff on a farm estate, and the family moved around when he was a child, firstly in Sussex, then in Hampshire. By 1911, William was still unmarried and living with his widowed mother and younger sister at 3 Maple Villas, in Faversham, Kent, where William was working nearby as a Clerk in the General Manufacture of Explosives. This was the role four years later when he earned the Edward Medal. Little else is known about him prior to his death in 1935 in Uxbridge aged 70.
EM CITATION:
His Majesty the KING has been graciously pleased to award the Edward Medal of the 2nd Class to Mr. George Evetts, Mr. William Edmund Bethell, Mr. Urbane Charles Beach, Mr. John Harrison, Mr. John Sears, Mr. William Wallace, Mr. George Gilham, and Private William James Wiltshire, on account of their gallant action on the occasion of an explosion which occurred at Faversham on the 2nd of April, 1915.
BURIAL LOCATION: UNKNOWN.
LOCATION OF MEDAL: UNKNOWN.
