William Bridges (general) - Early Life

Early Life

Born 18 February 1861 in Greenock, Scotland, the son of William Wilson Somerset Bridges (a Royal Navy captain) and Mary Hill Throsby, he was educated at Ryde on the Isle of Wight, at the Royal Naval School 1871-2 at New Cross, London and at Trinity College School (1873–1876) Port Hope, Ontario, Canada. He studied at the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, student number 25 from 1877-9 and obtained his M.Q. certificate. Cadet Bridges was one of the recruits who had entered RMC Kingston late in the second term on 10 April 1877. Although he was a good student, he became unsettled and began failing his courses when his family migrated to Australia leaving him in Kingston. Commandant Hewett asked his father to pay a $100 fine to withdraw his son. This ex-cadet was the first RMC dropout.

In 1879 he joined his family who had settled in his mother's home town of Moss Vale, New South Wales.

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