…I was acutely aware that we only have one actual relic of Grandpa Harris: the large certificate of honour depicted in the headline picture. We do not even have a surviving photograph of him – he died in the early 1940s – all such things were disposed of when Grandma moved out of the family home (104 Clapham Common Northside) in the 1960s.
I suspect that the certificate only survived because of its religious significance and the lingering, somewhat superstitious sense that such a thing should not simply be destroyed.
It lived at the back of my dad’s shop for at least a quarter of a century – then it lived in our Woodfield Avenue attic for another quarter of a century.
Mum nearly (accidentally) gave it away when dad died, but I managed to rescue it thanks to the good offices of Michael and Tessa Laikin who in any case hadn’t quite believed that I wanted shot of it, even if mum did.
It was in a pretty shocking state by the time I took it to Janie’s favourite picture framer in Bayswater, who declared the artefact to be on the verge of disintegration and recommended a specialist restorer to preserve it and bring it back to life before framing.
Several weeks and several hundred pounds later, it has pride of place on the hall wall in my flat.
The stunning, large certificate (60 x 45 cm unframed, 75 x 60 cm framed) commemorates my grandfather being honoured in the synagogue as Chatan Torah on the festival of Simchat Torah on 14/15 October 1922 – now 100 years ago. Or, in Hebrew calendar terms, 17/18 October 2022 is exactly 100 years after the event.
As it happens and by strange coincidence, Janie and I found ourselves on 15 October this year just around the corner from 14 Manette Street, which is the building which was, back then, the West End Talmud Torah & Bikkur Holim Synagogue.
I couldn’t resist the urge to walk around the corner and photograph the very building on the very 100th anniversary of Grandpa’s honour:
14 Manette Street, Soho as snapped by me, 15 October 2022
Religion isn’t my thing, but it was my grandparent’s thing and this honour would have been one of the most notable moments in my grandfather’s (relatively short) life.
That Soho synagogue – the West End Talmud Torah and Bikkur Holim was a rather fascinating and controversial thing, if Gerry Black’s Living Up West book is anything to go by (which it is…go buy it if you are interested). He describes it as an
orthodox and shtetl-like shule [synagogue, where comparatively] …the service, rabbi, and fervid atmosphere were more typical of the heim [the old country].
There are some wonderful passages in Living Up West about that Rabbi; I do remember my father talking about him as a formidable figure, even though my father was still quite small when the family moved away from Fitzrovia/Soho. Intriguingly also, the book reports that, by 1926, the congregation had grown so large that they needed to hire The Scala Theatre in Charlotte Street for overflow services.
Living Up West also has an astonishing, detailed account in it about the 1930 AGM and elections in that community that
…were on the point of coming to blows…
…Ultimately the meeting broke up in chaos and confusion.
I am minded to write more about that strange community, not least because those detailed accounts include the names that appear on Grandpa’s certificate.
But at the moment, 100 years on, we get more than enough such chaos and confusion from a more southerly part of Westminster. In any case my purpose today is really to commemorate my Grandpa’s big day in 1922.
Most people who know me and knew my parents thought that Peter Harris was my father. People who knew him better might have known that he was Peter Isidore Harris and/or that his first given name was Isidore – Peter came later. A handful of family members would be aware that the family on arrival in England were named Russinov, that my grandfather was known as Harris Russinov and that dad’s name on his 1919 birth certificate was Isidore Russinov.
Isidore, Anne & Michael Russinov, c1925
But it turns out that my father was actually some bloke named Teodoro Rossiter.
…I thought I should learn from Ron’s superb research into my mother’s family and do a similar dig into my father’s family. After all, research is a significant part of what I do for a living and Ron’s example had been very instructive as well as informative.
The central learning point from Ron’s research is that the recent on-line publication of the 1921 census opens up a new trove of information – probably the last such “big reveal” trove that will occur in my lifetime.
I thought it would be easy for me to find a family named Russinov in London in the 1921 census search engine…
…but absolutely nothing came up. I tried all the tricks I know to vary the spelling, allow the machine to approximate the spelling, look beyond London just in case they were away from London at the time…
…nothing.
I even tried Harris. Lots of other Harris families but definitely not mine.
Peter Harris in 2005. Were there secrets behind that smile?
I knew the family was in Fitzrovia (the south-eastern quarter of Marylebone) at that time and I even had a relic from the 1920s – a business certificate allowing the family to trade under the name Harris – which had at one time adorned the certificate wall of the Z/Yen office but was latterly in storage. I was pretty sure that 1920s certificate had an address on it.
Unfortunately, the certificate – which is for sure somewhere in Z/Yen’s secure storage dungeon – is being stored very securely indeed. It wasn’t where we thought it would be and 30 minutes of further searching in the dungeon convinced us that it must have been filed quite deeply – no doubt to be found when searching for something completely different.
I all but gave up on the idea of finding my paternal family in the 1921 census.
But I’m a tenacious sort of chap and was pondering the matter quite a bit. Then at the weekend a thought dawned on me. The granting of business certificates, at that time – indeed deep into the 20th century- often needed to be announced in a gazette. Such announcements naturally included the address.
So rather than search genealogy sites in vain, I searched my Newspapers.com subscription with my grandfather’s name instead. Instant pay dirt:
The Marylebone Mercury and West London Gazette on 3 Jan 1925
Interesting law, Section 7 of the Aliens Restriction (Amendment) Act 1919, requiring migrants to seek permission (at significant expense) to use an English-sounding rather than their natural-born alien name for their business.
Interesting street, Upper Marylebone Street. It subsequently became the eastern end of New Cavendish Street and was confusingly renumbered. Before my family’s time, Thomas Paine wrote The Rights Of Man at No 7. No 7 Upper Marylebone Street was a well-known hang out for radicals, writers and radical writers.
…locates Paine’s (now defunct) building, No 7 Upper Marylebone Street, on the site of 148 New Cavendish Street and No 4 – my Grandfather’s place – in a still-existing Georgian terraced house – now numbered 154 New Cavendish Street:
I’d found the family house from 1925 but had I found my family there in 1921? The transcription at first glance did not look promising:
But on reflection, this was unmistakably my family. Grandpa Harris, already 39 years old. Grandma Anne (Annie) much younger, 30. Uncle Alec, 13 at census time. Uncle Manny, just 10. Uncle Michael, a new born babe. Indeed, had it not been for the industrial action that delayed the 1921 census by several months, Uncle Michael might have missed it by a few days.
And there was dad, under the name Teodoro Rossiter.
No-one had even mentioned to me the use of the name Rossiter as an early anglicisation of the family name. As for Teodoro, it is a charming name, but hardly an anglicisation or simplification of the name Isidore.
This made no sense.
I decided to invest in a scan of the original document. It set me back the princely sum of £1.75 (a half-price special offer that weekend – who could resist such a good value deal? Dad would have approved and possibly even would have bought two copies to celebrate his bargain.)
Now I’m not qualified to opine upon or judge handwriting – Ogblog readers who are crazy enough to examine my hand-written diary entries can attest – but I think the hand-writing on the original census document is mighty fine and I think my dad’s entry very clearly says Isodore (admittedly not Isidore) Russinov and all of the “Rossiter family” (as transcribed) are written extremely clearly as “Russinov”.
I award myself 9 out of 10 for detective work and I award the transcriber 1 out of 10 for the transcription of my dad’s name…awarding 1 only because I don’t do 0 out of 10.
When I talked this through with Janie, she wondered whether this might mean that I could be related to Leonard Rossiter, the wonderful (deceased) comedy actor.
Used under fair use rationale to depict Leonard Rossiter in this article. To be clear, the transcription error of the family name “Russinov” to “Rossiter” does not in any way indicate that I, or any other member of the Harris/Russinov family, is related to Leonard, or indeed any other, Rossiter. In short, I didn’t get where I am today by being related to Leonard Rossiter.
I explained to Janie that transcription errors, much like noms de plume, don’t tend to have relatives.
My dad has had an unfortunate record of transcription errors with his records. In the late 1980s, when dad was around or approaching 70, he received a letter from the NHS addressed to Isadora Harris inviting “him” to have a cervical smear test. There must have been SO much wrong with the NHS record that led to that mistake.
Indeed, dad seems so prone to nominative transcription errors, I considered titling this piece “My Trans Dad”, but decided against on balance.
More seriously, I did of course find out some interesting facts about my family history.
I had always suspected that Grandpa Harris probably hailed from Vilnius, as I was aware that he had journeyed into the Belorussian part of the Pale of Settlement where he met and initially settled with my then very young Grandma Anne. But I was also aware that Uncle Manny had been born in Vilnius and had guessed that the family had probably returned to Grandpa Harris’s home place before migrating.
Vilnius in 1915
Grandma Anne stated in the census that she (and Uncle Alec) were born in Igumen, which is a Belarussian town now known as Chervyen. Trigger warning – it was the scene of multiple atrocities during the 1940s – don’t click the preceding link if you’d rather not know the details. It is about 70 km south-east of Minsk – about an hour’s drive today.
The family came a long way in a short space of time, from shtetl life in Igumen and Vilnius, to London life in Marylebone…
…but then the name Teodoro Rossiter is a long way from Isodore Russinov or Peter Harris.
