Mr Walter Mather, hospital orderly and his fascinating vesta case

This is a vesta case which was used for carrying matches.

They date from the 1830s and became particularly popular at the end of the 19th century and the early 20th, which fits perfectly with this one, which belonged to Mr Walter Mather.

The inscription records that he was awarded the case “in recognition of services at Woodlawn Hospital, 1914-19”.

Woodlawn was a Red Cross Hospital for men from the armed services recovering from wounds and illnesses.

It is a place I have written about quite extensively. *

It had been a private residence before the Great War and was handed over by its owner to the Red Cross for the duration of the conflict.

It was still there in Didsbury until relatively recently and there are those who have told me they knew the building when it was a private school.

That part of its history has yet to be revealed, and along with it, I hope we will discover more about Mr Mather.

According to the Red Cross records he joined the organisation in August 1916 and was living at 7 Clifton Avenue Fallowfield.

I have yet to find him in a census but the street directories for the early 1900s list numbers 5 to 11 Clifton Avenue as the Fallowfield Nurseries with a Walter Mather the proprietor and a Miss Elizabeth Cookson at number 5.

So the clues are there, and in time we should know more about him, his service at Woodlawn and perhaps about Miss Cookson.

We shall see.

In the meantime I remain fascinated by vesta cases, which were designed as a safety measure given that vesta matches when left together had a worrying and dangerous tendency to rub together and self ignite.

Pictures; the vesta case from the collection of David Harrop and the photograph of  Woodlawn courtesy of Rob Mellor

*Woodlawn,  https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Woodlawn