George Stainburn WILBY [1905-1966]

I am markedly doubtful, but 3aq may, perhaps, be my Uncle George (the seemingly much-feared-post-war George Stainburn Wilby (1905-1966) - one 'l'), who had arrived in HK from Nigeria in 1936. He first taught at Queen's College, but in 1939 (on an unknown date) he had been transferred to the Central British School, where he taught maths, as he had at Queen's College. (He had graduated from University College, Oxford, with a degree in maths in 1926.)

The only photos I have of Uncle George are:

a. a couple of very grainy and ill-reproduced newsprint photos from the HK Sunday Herald in 1940, one of him with the members of the 5th Hong Kong (St John's Cathedral) Scout Troop, which he'd founded in 1938 and of which he was the Scoutmaster. (It was disbanded in July 1940 because all the members had been evacuated from HK.) The pre-war images make it very hard to recognize anyone!

b. i. a postwar, 1947 photo of the staff of the Central British School (kindly sent to me by Tony Banham - Uncle George was a Lt in the HKVDC and in the Battle of HK was 2 i/c of No.3 (Aberdeen) Battery on Ap Lei Chau, and subsequently a POW).

ii. a lo res family photo taken during a visit in c.1961, after George had been ordained (he'd taken early retirement from HK in 1950 in order to enter the C of E priesthood) and early in his last living as Vicar of Powerstock-with-West Milton and North Poorton in Dorset.

Both the postwar photos show a markedly aged man, so are hard to compare with the blown up image from the 1939 photo (when George would have been 34). Family lore has his early death (he was 61) to have been a consequence of his privations as a POW, though there appears to be no record at all, oral or otherwise, of the cause of death.

There are some comparators (ears, jawline, nose, moustache...) that can be just about squeezed to suggest similarities...but then there's the stark contrast between the young, dark-haired male in the 1939 photo and the weary, grey-haired man of post-war...