My father William E Saul went to the Xaverian College; I attended the school for a short time in the 1960s. The photograph here was taken on Sports Day 1931; my father was ten years old at the time.
In the photograph my father is left of the shot, on the front row, right of the schoolboy in white. Our nanny Mrs Donovan, and our cook Auntie King, are seated on the middle row with my father’s six year old sister Betty, who is dressed in white and has curly hair. My grandparents would not have been able to attend as they had a busy hairdressing business in Preston Street called ‘Saul’s’.
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My father and his brother were also at the school around this time. He was born in 1921. Do you have any more photos at all?
My name is Donald Williams, my age is just 88 years. I was a pupil at Xaverian from 1943 to 1947. I started in class 3, aged 11. The Master was Brother Christopher and the Headmaster Brother Aloysius, we also had Brother Campion as Geography Master. I now live in Hailsham, North of Eastbourne.
My father attended the school back in 1921 as a boarder. He was regularly taken to Brighton racecourse along with his classmates by an Irish tutor, who thought it would be a good idea to skip class and have a ‘flutter’ on the horses instead. Unfortunately, this kickstarted a habit with my father who went onto gamble on the ‘gee-gees’ until his final days!
My father attended this school in about 1933-35. He was a Jewish boy and his mother sent him to the Xaverian College from their home in Berlin – which probably saved his life. I don’t know why or how she chose this school but he did well there, learning to speak English very rapidly and matriculated at the age of 16. He later became a university professor and a senior civil servant.
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