A teenage soldier was found dead at his barracks days after taking part in Queen Elizabeth’s state funeral following fears he faced an £11,000 bill for missing kit, an inquest heard.
Jack Burnell-Williams, 18, had felt he had been ‘accused of stealing’ by his superiors when uniform vanished, according to one of his friends.
On the second day of a week-long inquest, it was heard Mr Burnell-Williams also feared that one of his superiors was still pushing for him to be charged over the incident.
The young trooper was found hanging by his roommate at Hyde Park Barracks in London on September 28, 2022 – nine days after he appeared alongside other members of the Household Cavalry at the monarch’s state funeral, watched by 29 million people in the UK alone.
Corporal Nathan Lomas said he knew Mr Burnell-Williams ‘very well’ after moving to barracks in Knightsbridge, London, in June 2022.
He told the inquest at Inner West London Coroners Court on Tuesday morning that his friend had been upset because he thought he’d been accused of theft.
After a second phone call with one of his superiors, Mr Burnell-Williams was still ‘pretty stressed’ and felt the matter should be ‘put to bed’, he said.
Mr Burnell-Williams was accused of stealing a set of scales, which hold together front and back breastplates on uniform, alongside questions over a tunic and cloak.
Trooper Jack Burnell-Williams (pictured) was 18 when he was pronounced dead at Hyde Park Barracks in London – less than a fortnight after he walked in Her Majesty’s funeral procession in 2022
Images from the Queen’s funeral procession showed him in his ceremonial uniform as he escorted the monarch on her final journey, along with other members of the Household Cavalry
‘He was an 18-year-old lad looking at an £11,000 bill which for anyone would be quite a weight on their shoulders,’ Mr Lomas said.
‘He was a young lad far away from home, he did not get to see his family much and that can’t have been helpful either.’
The inquest heard on Monday how a pair of scales was seen in Mr Burnell-Williams’ wardrobe by his roommate Jake Robinson, who reported it to his chain of command.
He was asked to go and retrieve them and later found them under Mr Burnell-Williams’ mattress.
Another trooper, Ellie Purse, had recently lost a pair after they disappeared from her locker.
Mr Lomas described how Mr Burnell-Williams wasn’t keen on Ms Purse as he felt he was being ‘singled out’ for guard duties she couldn’t do due to health issues.
‘He thought it was favouritism towards Trooper Purse,’ he said.
He said Mr Burnell-Williams had never told him why the scales were in his room.
No further explanation was given in court.
Ms Purse also gave evidence, having moved to the barracks in Knightsbridge in May 2022 aged 22.
She said recruits would be graded out of 61 for their kit cleaning, with the punishment of being on your feet rather than on horseback meted out for those who didn’t make the grade.
Her set of scales had gone missing from her locker, and she initially thought she’d left them somewhere.
Ms Purse said she did not know who took the scales but added that she often felt her colleagues – including Mr Burnell-Williams – were trying to wind her up.
‘It could be quite a tense environment. It was an isolating place to be,’ she said.
Asked if she found the training hard, she added: ‘I would not wish to go back to the Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment very quickly.’
It came as other colleagues of Mr Burnell-Williams said the regiment was known as ‘suicide regiment’.
Giving a scathing review of his time there in a statement, Trooper Alfie Rogers recounted how recruits felt they were ‘being treated worse than the animals.’
He and Mr Burnell-Williams shared a room for 12 weeks.
‘If I knew how bad it could be, I wouldn’t have gone,’ Mr Rogers said.
Describing his time there as ‘exhausting’, he said many recruits struggled with cleaning their kit.
Although some days appeared to finish by 2pm on paper, he said that didn’t take into account kit cleaning, which often meant they would stay up until the early hours making sure it was tidy.
‘If your kit wasn’t clean, you got in trouble the next day and got put on extra duties,’ he said.
‘The more duties you were on, the more time you’d have to spend cleaning kit.
‘Work was the only thing in our lives.
‘I had constant anxiety about being inspected. I was very young and it was a lot of pressure.
‘I remember feeling like I needed my mum and dad, but I couldn’t get back to see them. It was eating me up as time went on.
‘The regiment is so traditional and stuck in its ways, I felt like tradition was prioritised over everything else.
‘Seniors didn’t understand how hard it was. They would say “we went through it so you have to go through it”.
‘They never considered changing things for the better.
‘Jack never said no to a duty and I think this maybe had been taken advantage of.’
He said there was a ‘running joke’ that it was known as ‘suicide regiment.’
‘Jack jumped on this straight away. He would say he was going to off himself. I didn’t think he was serious about taking his own life,’ Mr Rogers went on.
‘I think Jack did what he did because he was overwhelmed with everything.’
Jack Burnell-Williams, 18, had felt he had been “accused of stealing” by his superiors when uniform vanished, according to one of his friends
He also said Mr Burnell-Williams had worried so much about cleaning his kit, he had paid other people to do it.
Other witnesses said it was common for troopers to swap kit if theirs wasn’t clean.
Mr Burnell-Williams, from Bridgend in Wales, was found hanging by his roommate Mr Robinson at Hyde Park Barracks in London on September 28, 2022.
At the time of his death, he was a member of the Blues and Royals, part of the elite Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment, with duties including guarding the monarch.
The inquest previously heard he had been stressed by the number of hours he was working and had been told off for not properly cleaning his ceremonial kit, which he struggled with.
His girlfriend, Molly Holmes, previously told 1the inquest that one of the worst parts of the job for him had been making sure his kit was immaculate, and he would often have to re-do it.
‘He got stressed out about that because it had to be pristine,’ she told Inner West London Coroners Court.
‘It always had to be immaculate. He spent a lot of time on his kit, and it was never good enough.
‘He always got in trouble from the Corporal of the Horses about his kit.’
Asked whether Mr Burnell-Williams was punished, she added: ‘It was more a telling off, and he’d have to redo them.’
The hearing is expected to run for most of this week and will hear from some of the youngster’s British Army colleagues and superiors, in front of Assistant Coroner Bernard Richmond KC.
He has said he is keen to understand ‘the stressors acting on Jack’ before he died.
In court are Mr Burnell-Williams’ mum Laura Williams, 47, and dad Dan Burnell, 45.
Ms Williams has previously said that she hopes lessons can be learnt from her son’s passing, especially regarding how the Army treats young people’s mental health.
The inquest continues.
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