Hewitt's History Files

In 1942, apparently in the Chichester area, Stanley Royston Neville poisoned himself.

As a result, his five young children were taken back, it seems, to his home city of Oxford and put into care.

Among them was daughter Jean, who would have been 12 or 13 at the time.

Last year, however, she took her memories of those traumatic events with her to the grave.

Her son Graham Hopes, who lives in Oxford, would dearly love to understand what happened and to know more about his grandfather.

"I looked after my mother. It was me who did all the running around. It was really sad. I would get a lot of grief from my mum saying 'You don't realise how lonely it is.'

"But now I see the bigger picture. She had three brothers and a half-sister out there that she didn't know or didn't want to know or couldn't trace."

For full feature see West Sussex Gazette January 9