A 54-YEAR mystery linked to a Petersfield-area family has been solved and a fascinating artefact returned to them.

In 1963 Leonard Silver, staying at the Ramat Aviv Hotel in Tel Aviv, Israel, while on a business trip, found a small, old and dirty copper plate in the garden lawn.

Returning to the UK with it, he put it in a drawer, where it lay for 50 years, until, while clearing out he rediscovered it and cleaned it up – discovering that it was a copper template for the printing of a business card.

The inscription on the card read:

Mr Frank de Halpert

Advisor to the Ministry of the Interior

Addis Ababa Abyssinia

After researching the de Halpert family all over the world, Leonard found a Petersfield connection, and with the help of the Petersfield Post, tracked down Jeremy de Halpert, of Froxfield Green.

Earlier this month, he was able to hand over to the de Halpert family – elder brother Simon, sister Sussi and Jeremy – the copper plate, and so restore it to Frank’s descendants.

Brothers Frank and Roger de Halpert were born, respectively, in Berne, Switzerland, and Florence in the early 1880s before moving to London. While Roger joined the Royal Navy, Frank joined the Egyptian Civil Service.

At the outbreak of the First World War, Frank joined the Army, serving in the Egyptian Camel Corps in the Middle East, occasionally working with Lawrence of Arabia. In 1917 he was appointed Governor of the Western Desert, which covered most of western Egypt and the Sinai Peninsula – a vast and unexplored area - and was awarded the ‘Order of the Nile’.

In 1932 the British Government sent him to Addis Ababa, in present day Ethiopia, to advise Emperor Haile Selassie on the abolition of slavery. Hence the creation of the copper plate.

He resigned shortly before the Italian invasion of 1935 but stayed in Ethiopia working for the International Red Cross. During the Second World War he worked in the Government Censorship office, as a fire warden and as a special constable.

In the 1950s he was a librarian for the Royal Asian Society. He never married and died in 1971.

Meanwhile, Roger de Halpert transferred to the Royal Flying Corps in 1915 and rejoined the Royal Navy in 1917. Between the wars he farmed in Kenya, meeting up with brother Frank on several occasions, returning to UK and the RAF for the Second World War.

He retired first to Stroud, Gloucestershire, and finally, with his son, Michael, and three grandchildren, to Durford Wood, Petersfield, in 1968. Michael was estate manager at Bedales in the 80s and 90s and died in 2008.

Simon and Jeremy have enjoyed full careers in the Royal Navy, and live in the Petersfield area, as does Sussi.

Although there was no answer to the question of how the business plate ended up in an Israeli hotel garden, Glasgow-born Leonard, who lives in London, was delighted with the end result of his quest.

“This episode about Frank De Halpert and meeting his family has been one of the most exciting things I have ever experienced.”