School traces wartime pupil’s family
The discovery of a Second World War schoolboy’s letter from his mother has led to his former school tracing his son in Australia. The four-page letter from November 1939, found under the floorboards of a former dormitory in Sompting Abbotts Preparatory School in West Sussex, was addressed to “Dearest Jim”. Local and family history researchers helped Sompting Abbotts staff discover that “Jim” was Donald James Macbride, born in Richmond, London, to Colin and Ivy Macbride in 1926. The family emigrated to Australia in 1948, where Jim died in 2003. The school was able to contact his son Craig Macbride, 53, who described the letter as “a palpable connection to my family history I knew nothing about”.