A birth registration was found for Marcelle D O'Brien: Mother's Maiden Surname: Osborne; Date of Registration: Jul Aug Sep 1944; Registration district: Worthing; Registration county: Sussex, Isle of Wight; Volume Number: 2b; Page Number: 467.

In 1949, M. D. OBrien, 4, arrived in Fremantle, Australia, with one other child.

Marcelle was the subject of an inquiry which involved Queen Mary of England. The Argus reported in 1951:

A little girl of six slept peacefully in a small Australian town last night, unaware that she is the centre of a poignant human drama in which the Queen herself, and her brother-in-law the Duke of Gloucester, have intervened.

The child is Marcel O'Brien, an orphan who, soon after birth, came under the care of an Empire organisation for the care of homeless children.

When little Marcel was 13 months old she was handed over to Mrs. C. Chapman, a widow, who lives in the pleasant little Sussex, town of Lingfield.

Mrs. Chapman loves all children with passionate devotion. She has cared for nearly 100 such waifs as Marcel. And she had a child of her own, a little girl called Valerie.

She was told that Marcel would stay with her for two years and would then be sent to Australia.

She accepted her charge on those conditions. But she came to love Marcel, next to her own child, above all the others she had known.

Twenty months ago Marcel was duly sent to this country. Mrs. Chapman wept bitterly, but accepted the inevitable.

Then recently her own child, Valerie, died aged nine. Mrs. Chapman was prostrate with grief. As the days wore on she was overcome with longing for the other child, Marcel.

She appealed for her return time and again over the months. Her appeals failed. Then she had an inspiration.

She would write to the Queen and the Duke of Gloucester. The letters went, imploring their help to bring Marcel home.

Almost by the next post she received this letter from the Queen's private secretary:
r n"I am commanded by the Queen to say how very sorry Her Majesty is to hear of your tragic loss. The Queen understands you wish to have Marcell back from Australia to bring up as your own child, and Her Majesty is causing inquiries to be made to see what can be done."

Mrs. Chapman was overjoyed, but later the same day the postman knocked again at her little council house in Lingfield. A second Royal letter was slipped through the letter box--this time from teh Duke of Gloucester.

Mrs. Chapman opened it. When she read it she wept.

The letter was kindly in tone. The Duke sympathised sincerely with Mrs. Chapman's feelings, but earnestly he urged that she "might reflect again." Might it not be, he asked, that it would be in Marcell's real interests to leave her in the warmth of the Australian sun, to grow up among the wonderful opportunities Australia had to offer.

Mrs. Chapman was inconsolable. She still wanted Marcel.

The following day the postman knocked a third time.

A third Royal letter arrived. The Queen was writing again to Mrs. Chapman through her lady-in-waiting.
r n"I am to tell you," the letter ran, "there are legal reasons why Marcel cannot be brought back. The queen knows how disappointed you will be to hear this, but Her Majesty hopes you may gain some comfort from knowing that it is best for Marcell to stay in Australia, and that legal difficulties apart, it would naturally be very disturbing for a child of her age to be brought back to England, even though it would have been to so kind a home."

Today Mrs. Chapman is inconsolable. To Trevor Williams, The Argus correspondent in London, she said yesterday:
r n"Months before Marcell was five I knew I could not bear to part with her.
r n"I asked the home if I could adopt her as my very own, but they said tha the child's background made adoption impossible, and t