SEARCH FOR SISTER.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 80, 5 April 1939, Page 5

SEARCH FOR SISTER.

MAN'S 27 YEARS' QUEST. SUCCESS AT LAST. (SpeaJal—By Air Mall.) ' LONDOX. March 7. After a 27-years" search, 'the loneliest man in Brighton." , as he calls himself, lias found his sister, whom he has not seen since he was nine. He h Mr. John Clench, a newsagent, of IVlhaiu Street. His sister. Miss Lucy Clinch, who is working at Cheltenham, has also spent the gre-ater part of her life trying to find her brother. They have written to ear-h other and arranged a meeting early in April. '"My sister was 15 when we said goodbye,"' Mr. Clench told a reporter. "We were Tiving at Woolwich when, shortly before my mother's death, she was taken to a Salvation Army home. "A few years later I called at the home and was told she had left for a job.

"I have searched everrwhere for her without success. I have inserted advertisements in practically- every paper in the British Isles, without reply.

"Unknown to me. she had been doing the same thing. The name always struck a responsive chord in her memory, although she did not know she was born here.

""She decided to write to the Mayor of Brighton about her quest. The Mayor handed the letter to Brighton C.1.D.. and 1 was overwhelmed when a detective called on me with the letter.

"I had a letter from her this morning. She starts by saying: "It is the biggest thrill of my life to tind myself writing ti> -\ on after all these vears."

""I mil 1 wrote to her -Oie did not know that our mother and father had both died.

""I am m~>ing to try to persuade her to live with me at Brighton. 1 have no home of my own. b\it hope that my loneliness will soon be over."'