(72) James Compton TF/200404 4th Battalion Royal Sussex Regiment
72nd of the Old Boys of St Wilfrid’s School, Haywards Heath to lose his life in WW1.
Born on the 16th December 1895 in Southwater, Sussex, James was the only child of James Compton and his wife Caroline. He was baptised at St Wiflrid’s on 26th April 1896 when the family still lived at Southwater and his father is described as a farmer. By 1901 the family lived at 53 Gower Road in Haywards Heath and James senior was a coalman. By 1911 James junior had become an apprentice upholsterer working for George Hilton who had a business just round the corner from the Compton’s in South Road.
On 8 Aug 1915 James arrived in the Balkans and having survived that conflict where so many of St Wilfrid’s Old Boys had died later served in Belgium and it was there that he met his end, he died of wounds on 16 Oct 1918, aged 22. He is buried Lijssenhoek Military Cemetery, grave XXX. F. 4.
His mother Caroline was sent £28 15s 9d which was his outstanding pay and a War Gratuity of £25. His father died in 1950, while his mother was still at the house in Gower Road when she died in her nineties in 1963.
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