Jim Alderslade

James Percival “Jim” Alderslade was born in 1887, one of twin sons of John and Margaret Alderslade. He married Minnie Ruby Skinner at Moree in 1915, and after her death remarried in Queensland in 1926 to Eileen Deliah Goodman.

In the early 1930s Alderslade was at Lightning Ridge, working as a builder and publican. He built the town’s third Post Office in 1932 and was involved with the rebuilding the Imperial Hotel, which he operated as licensee in 1933. He was a gravedigger at Lightning Ridge during the 1930s.

After he left the Ridge, finding work with the Civil Construction Corps during the Second World War. He served in Darwin and later in Papua New Guinea, described as the “veteran of the party” at age 56.

Alderslade later settled at Katoomba in the Blue Mountains, where he died in 1963 aged 76.

• Jim Alderslade @ Find a Grave.

Article: Research by Leisa Carney, edited by Russell Gawthorpe. LRHS research compiled by Len Cram and Barbara Moritz. Sources: The Lightning Ridge Book, Stuart Lloyd, 1967, p. 155; Lightning Ridge - The Home of the Black Opal: Unique to the World, Gan Bruce, 1983, p. 54; Walgett Spectator, 11 April 1934; ‘Work in New Guinea’, The Mercury, 27 April 1943, p. 4; ‘Rejects Divorce Alibi’, The Labor Daily, 7 June 1938, p. 3; ‘Alderslade Appeal Dismissed’, The Telegraph, 22 April 1935, p. 9; ‘War Veterans for Civil Work in N. G’, Army News, 2 May 1943, p. 3; ‘Sydney Divorce: Petitioner’s Threat to Kill Co-respondent’, The Townsville Daily Bulletin, 6 June 1938, p. 6.