Captain Matthew Holford Hale
(1835-1912)
31 March 1861

Volume 3, page 29, sitting number 2815.

Born on 26 July 1835, Matthew Holford Hale was the son of Robert Blagden Hale of Alderley in Gloucestershire. He was baptised there on 16 August 1835.

On 13 May 1853 he joined the 26th (The Cameronian) Regiment of Foot as an Ensign by purchase. By 1859 he had risen to the rank of Captain. 

He appears on the 1861 census living with his uncle Edward Blagden Hale in the village of Alderley, rather than with his parents and sisters at nearby Mount House. 

In 1871 he was once again living with his immediate family, now at Alderley Court in Alderely. He gave 'Captain [in the] Infantry [on] full pay' as his profession.

In 1891 he was still at Alderley Court, where his brother Robert was now the head of the household. The two bachelors had five servants to look after them. Robert was a retired Major-General and Matthew a retired Colonel.

Colonel Hale never married. He appears on the 1911 census living with his two unmarried sisters Theodoria and Georgiana at Alderley near Wotton-under-Edge in Gloucestershire. The household also comprised nine servants, including a butler, a footman and two sick nurses. 

Colonel Matthew Holford Hale died, aged 76, on 28 January 1912 at Alderley and was buried in the churchyard of St Kenelm three days later. He left an estate valued at £36,380.