Lost on the pre-dreadnought battleship HMS Russell.
Matthew Burrell was born on 10th January 1885 in Hebburn. The 1911 census shows him in Imery Grove South Shields with his wife Ethel who had been born around 1882 in Staffordshire. At the time they had been married under one year and four step children with the surname Grimwood were in the home as well as baby Kate Burrell, 8 months, who will have been the child of her second marriage to Matthew Burrell. Matthew was, in 1911, a coal hewer.
In 1901, Matthew was in South Shields with parents John, from Houghton le Spring and Kate who had been born in Newcastle. His occupation was a perilous one, being a trapper in the coal mine. He was one of seven children who had been born at various County Durham pit villages and in 1891 the family were to be found in Wingate.
At some point Matthew Burrell and his family moved to Hartlepool as his wife Ethel is recorded as living at 15 Burbank Street, West Hartlepool, at the time of his death. Matthew, a Stoker, was lost when his ship, HMS Russell, was mined and sunk off Malta on 27th April, 1916.
