How mystery photos pulled from a skip told moving story of two Sheffield brothers separated by war
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The Sheffield City Archives on Shoreham Street are closed to the public to help enforce social distancing measures. However, the building’s staff have been taking part in an initiative called #ArchiveZ, which challenges institutions to post on Twitter about a different topic for each letter of the alphabet.
For the letter B, curators have picked an item that relates to the theme of ‘brothers’ – in this case, a small box of photographs salvaged last year by a passer-by from a skip on Rockley Road, Hillsborough.
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Hide AdFollowing their discovery, the photos were passed to the archives, where staff member Tim Knebel researched the identities of the individuals in the uncaptioned pictures.
The images show two young boys together, as well as happy scenes from Bamforth Street in Hillsborough during the Silver Jubilee celebrations for King George V, and the sombre sight of a Second World War grave in Eritrea, East Africa, marking the last resting place of 23-year-old Private John Ellis Squire, killed in 1941.
Investigations found John Ellis Squire was the son of John Ellis Squire senior and Rosella Squire. The family lived on Bamforth Street in a terraced house that would have been demolished long ago – the main subjects of the photographs are believed to be John Ellis Squire junior and his younger brother Eric Squire, pictured as schoolboys in around 1930.
“While John Ellis Squire junior’s life was cut tragically short, records suggest his younger brother Eric lived a long life in Sheffield until his death in 2015, aged 94," the archives say.
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“The photographs of the brothers together as schoolboys, as well as the picture of John’s war grave in Eritrea, were evidently kept together in a small box, which ended up discarded after Eric’s death before being found in a skip in Hillsborough, presumably thrown away as part of a house clearance.
“It seems Eric treasured the memory of his big brother John to the last – the brother who was denied the opportunity to grow old as he was.”
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