Page 58 - Who Was Sapper Brown

So Who is Buried in Mathiatis?

The 71st Highland Light Infantry lost five men during their five months in Cyprus in 1878. The Muster

Books and the Casualty Returns in The National Archives give their names as Privates James McGlashan
(died 24 July 1878), James Hewitt (29 July 1878), Henry Elliott (7 August 1878), James Lowden (4

September 1878) and David Splain (16 September 1878).

The first three of these Highlanders died before the regiment moved to Dali on 29 August, so they must
have been buried near Chiflik Pasha. Their graves are now lost.

The young soldier of the 71Highland Light Infantry recorded by Wolseley as dying of sunstroke on 4
st
September 1878, barely a week after the Highlanders moved to Dali, can only have been Private James

Lowden. It must have been his grave that Major Donne noticed near the Greek church in Dali in 1882.
His grave was lost by the time that Major Harfield sought it in 1975.

That only leaves Private David Splain, who died on 16 September 1878. He has to be the lone Highlander

buried at Mathiatis. The cause of his death is not recorded.

Extract from Muster Book (Pay List) of the 71st Foot. Private David Splain had been a

footman before enlisting in the 71st Highland Light Infantry on 6 March 1863.

In Chapter 3, we discovered that Sapper James Brown, Royal Engineer, had also been buried at Mathiatis,
having died on 2 February 1879, though he is now re-interred at Wayne’s Keep. There are no traces of his

original grave at Mathiatis.

And this brings us full circle to the letter from the Governor of Cyprus in 1959, quoted earlier:

‘Mathiati. This very small plot of land (25 x 15 yards) is in an out-of-the-way part of the Nicosia district,

and according to a 1922 report contains only 2 graves [author’s emphasis]... It is rarely visited by anyone,
and it seems hardly necessary to take it into much account.’

The Governor sadly had many other more pressing matters to take into account at the time, after the five

traumatic years of the EOKA insurgency and in the run-up to the independence of Cyprus.
Mathiatis Cemetery did indeed only ever have two graves, those of Private David Splain and Sapper

James Brown, and at last they have been taken into account.

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