Isaac Marsden
My great-great-grandfather Isaac Moses (1808 - 1884) was the son of Elias Moses, and the “Son” in the firm of E. Moses & Son. Everything about E. Moses & Son I have put on the Elias Moses page. In 1865 Isaac adopted the additional surname Marsden, as did the entire family.
Portrait of Isaac Marsden (provided by Hugh Marsden, son of Cedric Herbert Marsden and grandson of Herbert Philip). Photo of Isaac Marsden’s second wife, my great-great-grandmother Esther, taken at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1867 (provided by Pierre-André Meyer).
Timeline
1808 On 22nd September Isaac Moses is born in London. Two sisters were also born in London: Martha Sarah (1810) and Hannah (1812). Isaac may also have had a brother Jonas (died 1842).
1814 Isaac’s sister Fanny is born in Bristol.
1821 Isaac’s sister Sarah is born, also in Bristol.
1825 Isaac’s mother Judith Jacobs dies aged 45.
1827 On 20th June, aged 18, Isaac marries Rachel Hyam . Rachel, born in Ipswich in 1804, is 4 years older than Isaac. Andrew Godley, in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, describes this as a dynastic marriage:
Indeed, family alliances through marriage ensured that the second largest retailers were brought into the fold, when Isaac married Rachel, the daughter of Hyam Hyam, another Jewish entrepreneur in the ready-made clothing industry. The Hyam family was already linked to the Leicester-based clothing manufacturers of Hart and Levy, who went on to become one of the largest clothing manufacturers in Britain.
Rachel’s paternal grandfather was Simon Hyam, born in Hamburg about 1740, who was generally known as “Simcha Ipswich” (after the East Anglian town where he settled). Rachel’s mother Hannah Lazarus was a daughter of Moses Lazarus of Rochford, Essex. “Moses Lazarus, who hailed from Worms, was generally known from his place of residence as Moses Rochford, and is the ancestor of half of the upper stratum of Anglo-Jewry of older vintage”.
Rachel Hyam has five brothers: Lawrence Eleazer (born 1806), David (1808), Benjamin (1811), Samuel (1812) and Simon (1815). Examples of the links between the Hyam family and Hart & Levy (noted by Andrew Godley) are Lawrence Hyam’s (second) marriage to Catherine Levy and Samuel Hyam’s marriage to Phoebe Levy. In the 1870s Benjamin, Simon, and the sons of Samuel Hyam would change their name to Halford, but other brothers (David, Lawrence, and Samuel) retained the name Hyam.
1828 The first child of Isaac and Rachel, Julia, is born in Bristol. Isaac is aged 19. Rachel’s brother Lawrence Hyam marries Caroline Elias, who is aged 14.
1831 Daughter Kate (Rebecca) is born in London, where Isaac and family have moved, living first at 6 Houndsditch, the location of E. Moses & Son.
1832 Son Maurice Isaac is born in Aldgate: Isaac and family have moved to 154 Minories with the shop E. Moses & Son.
1833 Son Montague is born in Aldgate.
1836 Daughter Rachel is born; when she is 26 days old, on 27th November, her mother Rachel dies aged 32. At the age of only 28, Isaac is a widower with five children, and it will be another nine years before he marries again.
1837 David Hyam, a brother of Isaac’s first wife Rachel, is married to Isaac’s sister Hannah (born 1812). In February 1837 Hannah Hyam gives birth in Coventry to her first child, a daughter who is named Rachel after her recently deceased aunt. Hannah and David Hyam move to Bristol, where David establishes a tailor and outfitter shop at 42 Wine Street; this was initially known as “D. Hyam & Co” but was probably part of the wider Hyam family business, and was later known as “Hyam & Co”. According to Judith Samuel (“Jews in Bristol”, Redcliffe, 1997, pp 56-59) David’s brother Benjamin Hyam had started a ready-made clothing firm in Manchester with branches in many cities. Bristol tax records list the dwelling house of D. Hyam in the same street as his shop: 15 Wine Street, where the family lived from 1839 to 1852. Hannah and David Hyam will have another 4 children, the first 3 being born in Bristol: Kate (1839), Ruth (1840), Montague (1842), and Elias (born 1856 in Paddington, London).
1839 When Isaac’s sister Fanny (born 1814) gives birth to a daughter, she also names her Rachel after her late aunt. Fanny’s husband is Barnet Joseph, a Woollen Draper born 1805 in Falmouth, Cornwall. They will have a total of 9 children: Julia (born 1835 in Bristol), twins Alfred and Lewis (born 1837 in Leeds), Rachel (1839), Harry (1841 in Newcastle-on-Tyne), Kate (1843), Annabell/Arrabella (1845), Montague (1848), and Esther (1849). Alfred’s twin brother Lewis died in childhood (he is recorded only in the 1841 census).
1839 Lawrence Hyam and his wife Caroline (née Elias) live in Bury St Edmonds, Suffolk, where their son Hyman Hyam is born. Their first child Emma was born in 1832.
1841 Isaac is now aged 32; in the census he is the only member of the Moses family living at 154 Minories. Isaac’s father Elias Moses, aged 58, is recorded in the census at 7 Union Street, St James, Bristol, together with two of Isaac’s sisters (Martha, aged 25, and Sarah, aged 20) and Isaac’s daughter Rachel, aged 4. Bristol tax records list 7 Union Street as a dwelling house owned by one Jacob Roberts and occupied by “E. Moses & Son”. The firm already had a wholesale and export depot in Bristol, but an advert in ‘The Bristol Mercury’ in January 1840 announced that these premises were to be extended “to carry out the business of woolen drapers, tailors, and outfitters”. The Bristol branch would close in June 1843, by which time Elias Moses and family had left Union Street. (Thanks to Laura Jones for this information.)
1841 Isaac’s sister Sarah marries Meyer Meyer in Bristol Synagogue. Son of Solomon Myers, he had been born in London c. 1815, had lived for some years in Hull and became that city’s first representative on the Board of Deputies of British Jews (information from Michael Sayers, citing Israel Finestein,“The Jews of Hull, between 1766 and 1880”, Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England, Vol. XXXV, 1996-1998). At the time of his marriage in 1841 Meyer’s address is Bread Street, Cheapside, London, and he is a Fur Manufacturing Merchant. Sarah and Meyer Meyer will have 14 children: Julius (born 1843 in Blackfriars, London SE1), Alfred Isaac (born 1845 at 21 Artillery Place, Finsbury, London), Barrington (1846), Montague (1847), Emily Sarah (1849), Walter (1851), Ernest (1852 at Sion House, London E), Arthur (1854), Leopold Charles David (1855), Annie Flora (1857), Theodore (1861), Ada Martha (1863 at 53 Gordon Square, London WC1), and Isabel Rose (1866). On both Leopold and Emily, see Marsdens in France.
1845 Caroline (née Elias), first wife of Lawrence Hyam, dies aged 31. Their children Emma and Hyman are aged 13 and 6.
1845 On 25th May Isaac marries Esther Gomes Silva who was born in 1825 in Kingston, Jamaica: see Gomes Silva page. Isaac is 36, and Esther who is only 20 becomes the step-mother of Julia (16), Kate (14), Maurice (13), Montague (12) and Rachel (9). Esther’s father is Moses Gomes Silva; her mother Elizabeth (earlier known as Bathsheba) Gomes Silva (née Mesquitta) was born in 1805 so is only 3 years older than Isaac, her son-in-law. Isaac’s address at the time of his second marriage is still 154 Minories.
1846 Isaac and family now live at 11 Sussex Place, Regent’s Park; here the first child of Isaac and Esther, Madeline, is born. See Marsdens in France.
1846 The enormous expansion of E. Moses & Son takes place. Though there is no concrete evidence I think it is reasonable to assume that Isaac’s marriage with Esther brought a big injection of capital into the business of E. Moses & Son.
1847 Son Algernon is born.
1847 Rachel, Isaac’s last child with Rachel Hyam, dies in London at the age of 10.
1847 Lawrence Hyam, whose children by late wife Caroline, Emma and Hyman, are aged 15 and 8, marries his second wife Catherine Levy. Though Lawrence is aged 41, he and Catherine will have nine children.
1848 Son Herbert Philip is born.
1849 Daughter Angelina Florence is born.
1849 Isaac registers two designs at the Patent Office. The registrations, now lodged at the National Archives, are in the name of Isaac Moses as “Proprietor and trading under the name of E. Moses & Son.” The registrations are for a Duplex (reversible) waistcoat; and a “Sternophylon” shirt and chest protector.
1849 Julia (first child with Rachel, born 1828) marries at The Great Synagague, London EC3; her husband is Edward Henry Moses (later Beddington), eldest son of Henry Tsebi Moses (1791-1875) whose company H.E. & M. Moses (’M’ being Edward’s younger brother Maurice) made a fortune by manufacturing clothing in England, and selling it in Australia though a network of extended family. The neglected story of H.E. & M. Moses has recently been told by Adam D. Mendelsohn in his book “The Rag Race: How Jews Sewed Their Way to Success in America and the British Empire” (NYU Press, 2014) and his article “From Moses to Moses: Jews, Clothing, and Colonial Commerce” in “Purchasing Power: The Economics of Modern Jewish History”, edited by Rebecca Kobrin and Adam Teller (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015).
Julia and Edward Moses (later Beddington) will have six children, who would marry into the aristocracy of English Jewry:
Henry Edward (born 1850) married Floretta Marianne Cohen in 1880; she was a daughter of Lionel Lewis Cohen, M.P.. Henry Edward Beddington and Floretta Cohen had a son Brigadier Sir Edward Henry Lionel Beddington and a daughter, Alice Violet Beddington, who married Sir Robert Waley-Cohen.
Rachel (born 1851) married the numismatist Hyman Montagu in 1872.
Esther Julia (born 1852) married Herbert Samuel Leon in 1873 but died in 1875 aged 22, eight days after giving birth to her second child. Herbert Leon went on to become an M.P. and Baronet, and in 1883 he built Bletchley Park which was home to the Leon family until 1938 when it became the base for MI6’s communication operations.
Hannah Annette (Nettie) (born 1854) married Henry Levy in 1874. Their son, Major Walter Henry Levy, married Nellie Samuel, daughter of Viscount Bearsted Marcus Samuel, a founder of Royal Dutch Shell and Lord Mayor of London.
Harriet Hannah (born 1859) married Arthur Sebag-Montefiori, a son of Sir Joseph Sebag-Montefiori.
Rose Beddington (born 1858) married Sir Harry Simon Samuel,M.P.. Their son Edward John Samuel emigrated to New Zealand and married Julia Ngawini Yates, a daughter of (British Jew) Samuel Yates and Ngawini Murray who had a distinguished Maori pedigree.
1850 Daughter Edith Josephine is born. See Marsdens in France.
1851 Census records the household of Isaac and Esther at 36 & 37 Gloucester Square, Hyde Park. Children are Madeline (aged 4), Algernon (3), Herbert Philip (2), Angelina Florence (1), and Edith Josephine. They have 13 servants, 6 of whom live at 37 Gloucester Square.
1851 Census records Elias Moses, aged 68, living at Walnut Tree House, Stockwell Road, Lambeth, London, together with his unmarried daughter Martha (aged 38) and his grand-daughter Kate Moses (aged 20, Isaac’s daughter, born 1831). There are 4 servants in the household (companion, cook, housemaid, and coachman).
1851 Census records Lawrence Hyam, brother of Isaac’s late first wife Rachel, aged 44, an outfitter, living with his second wife Catherine (née Levy) at 59 Euston Square, London. Children present at this census are Alice (aged 3), Louise Frances (1 year) and Lewis (5 months). They will have another 6 children: Stephen, Leopold, Jonas, Hannah, Nathaniel, and Sophie. Lawrence’s children from his first marriage, Emma and Hyman (aged 19 and 12), are not present.
1851 Daughter Georgina Hester is born. See Marsdens in France.
1852 Daughter Constance Rebecca is born. See Marsdens in France.
1852 Hannah and David Hyam and their children leave Bristol to join David’s brothers who are all living in Bayswater, London. But the Hyam & Co shop in Bristol is run by a manager and will continue to trade until 1884. At the time she leaves Bristol, Hannah Hyam is the President and Treasurer of the Bristol Hebrew Ladies’ Benevolent and Educational Society, whose objects concern improvements for the resident Jewish poor. (Judith Samuel, “Jews in Bristol”, Redcliffe, 1997, pp 56-57, 78-79.)
1852 In October Montague (son with Rachel born 1833), aged 19, arrives in Australia. He is travelling with John Asher Gomes Silva - the brother of his step-mother Esther - also aged 19. The same month a branch of E. Moses & Son is opened in Melbourne: see Gomes Silva page.
1853 Son Rodolph Isaac is born.
1854 Montague (son with Rachel born 1833), marries Flora Levyson who was born in Prussia (Germany) in 1830. Montague and his wife Flora Levyson will have 8 children: Percy (born 1857), Marion Emily Flora (1858) , Gertrude Julia (1860), Amy Charlotte (1862), Leonard Levison (1864), Florence Kate (1865), Edward Levison (1870) and Maurice Anthony (1872).
1854 Daughter Angelina Florence dies at the age of 4.
1854 On 24th May Maurice Isaac (son with Rachel, born 1832), is initiated into the Freemason’s Lodge of Australia (Felix) in Melbourne. He is listed as aged 25 (though actually 22) and an importer.
1855 Daughter Sybila Augusta is born.
1855 In February a notice appears in the ‘Melbourne Argus’ regarding a storekeeper business at Bendigo Diggs (Bendigo being the epicentre of the Australian Gold Rush in the 1850s). In future “the business will be carried on by the undersigned, Maurice Isaac Moses and John Gomes Silva”, John Silva’s signature being “by his attorney, Montague Moses.” As we have seen, John had first travelled to Australia in 1852 with Montague, and Maurice was in Melbourne some time before 1854. (In January 1855 another store was established in Ballaarat by Samuel Solomon Lazarus on behalf of Maurice Isaac Moses, but this was destroyed by fire in November 1855: ‘Melbourne Argus’, 10 June 1857.)
1855 Kate, second child with Rachel, born 1831, marries John Asher Gomes Silva - the brother of her step-mother Esther. The marriage takes place on 20th June at the Moses residence, 36 Gloucester Square, Hyde Park, and is conducted by the Chief Rabbi. John then returns to Australia with Kate: see Gomes Silva page. John Gomes Silva would later be known as John Templeton, but then again as John G. Silva.
1856 E. Moses & Son closes its wholesale branch in Melbourne, Australia, this notice appearing in the ‘Melbourne Argus’ of 8 April:
TO Let, those extensive and commodious Premises now in the occupation of E. Moses and Son, two stories high, containing two large offices and strong room, and fitted with a large American wheel for hoisting goods to the upper floors. For further particulars apply on the premises to E. MOSES and SON, Lonsdale-street west, adjoining the Treasury.
The business of E. Moses & Son in Bendigo is also closed, the premises being taken over by a grocery (‘Bendigo Advertiser’, 16 May).
1856 Daughter Sybila dies at the age of 1.
1856 Daughter - and my great-grandmother - Adela Louise is born.
Now at the height of his success, Isaac Marsden and family move to 23 Kensington Palace Gardens. “The first occupant was Isaac Moses, a merchant, who bought the lease … towards the end of 1855….. In 1856 the same architect [J. D. Hopkins] designed for Moses the two-bay three-storey extension at the south-west corner and the bow-fronted ballroom at the back. The elegant conservatory on the south side was erected in 1877–8 to the design of Edward Salomons, who was also the architect of a new billiard-room which was built at the north-west corner in the same year. This house is now (1972) occupied by the Japanese Embassy.”
Photo of 23 Kensington Palace Gardens in 2009, by Keith Mayer.
1858 Son Stephen Leopold is born.
1858 The “great auction” of property in St John’s Wood is spread over five days. A large number of properties are bought by Isaac, his son-in-law Edward Henry Moses (who had married Julia in 1849, and would later use the name Beddington), and Edward’s father Henry Tsebi Moses. Isaac purchases from the Eyre Estate the site of the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), which he would sell to the MCC in 1866 for triple the price. Mireille Galinou has written a detailed account in her book on St Johns Wood, “Cottages and Villas: The Birth of the Garden Suburb” which was published in 2010. Here is an extract:
In October 2016 a party of four great-great-grandsons of Isaac Marsden (my brother David, cousins Keith and Phillip Mayer, and myself) visited the MCC Library. These pictures are of the 1866 sale document; I am in the pink shirt, with Neil Robinson of Lords Library.
1858 Marriage takes place of Kate Hyam (born 1839, daughter of Isaac’s sister Hannah and his first wife’s brother David Hyam) to Montague Richard Leverson, born 1830, a lawyer in the City of London and son of a diamond merchant. 10 years earlier, aged 18, Leverson had accidentally shot a servant, Priscilla Fitzpatrick, at the family’s London home. The story has been recounted by his great-granddaughter Esther Rantzen. ‘The Times’ reported Leverson’s court appearance on 5th May 1848, but it was accepted that the shooting was an accident and Leverson was not charged. Priscilla Fitzpatrick died a few days later.
At the time of his marriage in 1858 the 28-year-old Leverson has already begun what Professor Stephen Banfield (in an unpublished note) calls “his prolific output of books and pamphlets”: his work “Copyright and Patents, or Property in Thought” was published in 1854.
In September 1859 Leverson is on board the maiden voyage of the SS Great Eastern when a huge explosion occurs; his legal partnership Messrs. Leverson & Hawley then handles the subsequent claims (‘The Times’, 28th November 1859).
Kate Hyam/Leverson and her husband Montague Richard Leverson will have 4 children: Hester “Hettie” Hannah (1859-1940), William Ellis (1860-1940), Louis Pianciani (1863-1944), and Eliza “Lizzie” Emma (1865-1955). At the time of Hettie’s birth in 1959 the family home is at 14 Marlborough Road, St John’s Wood.
1859 Maurice Isaac (son with Rachel, born 1832) has apparently resurrected the business of E. Moses & Son in Melbourne, Australia (reportedly closed in 1856). On 24 February a notice appears in the ‘Melbourne Argus’:
TO CLOTHIERS, Drapers, Boot and Shoe Dealers, and Others. - M. I. MOSES and Co., late E. Moses and Son, 38 Little Collins-street west, invite inspection of their immense and superior STOCK of CLOTHING and BOOTS (manufactured expressly for this market by the celebrated firm of E. Moses and Son, London) ex Red Jacket, Essex, and other recent arrivals, which they are clearing out at greatly-reduced prices, to make room for extensive winter shipments per Suffolk, Southampton, and other first class vessels, daily expected, of which due notice will be given. A. C. PIRANI, Manager.
And on 9 October 1959 another piece in the same paper refers to “Maurice Isaac Moses, of Melbourne”.
1861 Daughter Isabel Blanche is born.
1861 Census records the household of Isaac and Esther at 23 Kensington Palace Gardens. They have 10 children aged from 15 years to 2 months, and 11 servants including Sarah Murray from Kingston, Jamaica, a “nurse” aged 28.
1861 Census records Elias Moses (aged 78) living at 1 Porchester Terrace North, London, together with his unmarried daughter Martha Sarah (aged 49) and 4 servants. In the same year Martha Sarah dies.
1861 Census records Montague (son with Rachel, born 1833) at 23 Portsdown Road, Marylebone. He and his wife Flora now have 3 children. Montague is aged 27 and “manager, outfitting business” (E. Moses & Son).
1861 Census records Lawrence Hyam (brother of Isaac’s late first wife Rachel), aged 53, a “Merchant and Outfitter Employing 39 men”. The household now lives at 9 Leinster Terrace, Bayswater, and includes Lawrence’s son from his first marriage, Hyman Hyam (aged 22), who is married and a Merchant’s Clerk.
1863 Frederick Benjamin Hyam, son of Benjamin Hyam (a brother of Isaac’s first wife Rachel), is admitted to the Freedom of the City of London. Frederick Hyam, later Halford, is aged 27 and a Wholesale Clothier at 80 Cannon Street West.
1865 Daughter Beatrice Helen is born.
1865 Isaac Moses adds the additional name Marsden. Other members of the family do the
same. Montague (son born 1833) had already changed his surname from Moses to Montagu; in 1867 he keeps the Montagu and also adds Marsden, so he is now Montague Montagu Marsden.
‘Morning Post’, 6 January 1865; Jewish Chronicle’, 18 January 1867.
1867 Maurice (Isaac’s first son with Rachel, born 1832) marries Amelia Fallek, a widow, born in Krakov, Poland, of a Hungarian family. The marriage takes place in Paris. In the same year Amelia’s brother Salomon Fallek, a diamond merchant, marries Madeline (Isaac’s first child with Esther, born 1846). See Marsdens in France.
1867 Montague Richard Leverson, who in 1858 had married Kate Hyam (daughter of Isaac’s sister Hannah and David Hyam), leaves England for Paris, wanted by the London police on charges of fraud. Kate Hyam/Leverson takes her four young children to Germany and sets up a finishing school for Jewish, English girls, initially in Göttingen and later in Hannover. Kate’s parents are opposed to the finishing school project and invoke the support of the Chief Rabbi, who however sides with Kate.
I do not accept the story that Leverson stole or mishandled his clients’ money. The fraud case against him has to be seen in the context of Leverson’s radicalism, evident as early as March 1858 when he appeared in court for a man accused of “Alleged Libel on the French Emperor”, and declared that “Abuse of a ruler must … be allowed to any extent” (‘The Times’, 1st, 24th, 26 March 1858). In the 1860s Leverson’s London home was a centre for “lovers of freedom, revolutionaries, refugees” and among his associates were Garibaldi, Mazzini, and other Italian radicals (Diana McVeagh, “Gerald Finzi: His Life and Music”, Boydell Press, 2005). Certainly his elder brother George Bazett Colvin Leverson was a prominent figure in the London group which raised funds to support Garibaldi (‘The Times’, 23rd-24th August and 12th September 1860, 13th April 1864). By 1862 Leverson, no longer in partnership with Hawley, owned the firm ‘Leverson, Solicitor’, and took as his articled clerk the prominent radical Charles Bradlaugh, republican, founder of the National Secular Society, and later a member of Parliament. In 1866 Leverson was active in the Reform League and was a steward at demonstrations (‘The Times’, 3rd July and 16th August 1866). In the same year he published his “Reformers’ Reform Bill”, and submitted a petition to the House of Commons for reforms to procedure in courts of law (‘The Times’, 16th February 1866).
The fraud warrant against Leverson was issued in December 1866 because he was deemed liable for financial losses suffered when a client’s Russian bonds were seized. Leverson had acted in court for the plaintiffs in an attempt to recover these seized bonds, declaring that his client had obtained them from “insurgents engaged in insurrection against the Russian Government” and that the bonds were “lawful spoils of war” (‘The Times’, 7th and 21st March 1864, 6th May 1865).
By the winter of 1867-68 Leverson had left Paris for New York, where he almost immediately began to publish pamphlets and to work as a volunteer teacher of political economy.
1868 Elias Moses, father of Isaac Moses Marsden, dies on 24th January at 57 Porchester Terrace, Bayswater. He is buried at West Ham cemetery, Section PM, Row 6, Plot 23. His will is proved by three of his executors, and all are his sons-in-law: Barnet Joseph (married to Fanny), David Hyam (married to Hannah), and Meyer Meyer (married to Sarah). The Josephs now live in Brighton, the Hyams at Colville Square, Notting Hill, and the Meyers at 53 Gordon Square.
1868 Daughter Ida Frances is born. She will be Isaac’s last child: he is now aged almost 60 and his first-born, Julia, is aged 40.
1871 The census records Isaac’s mother-in-law, Elizabeth Gomes Silva, living with Isaac, Esther and family in Kensington. 10 children are present, aged from 23 (Algernon) to 2 (Ida Frances), and there are 10 servants still including Sarah Murray from Kingston, Jamaica. Herbert Philip (22) is a Broker. Madeline and Salomon Fallek are at 43 Queensborough Terrace: see Marsdens in France.
1871 Census records Montague (son with Rachel, born 1833) and family at Frankfort House, Adamson Road, Hampstead. He and his wife Flora now have 7 children. Montague’s occupation is “General Merchant”. The household includes Flora’s father Isaac Levyson, aged 67, a widower born in Prussia, “formerly Principal of Educational Establishment”. They have 5 servants.
1871 Census records the family of Sarah Meyer (Isaac’s sister born in 1821) living at 53 Gordon Square, St Pancras, London. Sarah is aged 49. Her husband Meyer Meyer is aged 56 and is a Fur Manufacturing Merchant. Four sons work in the family firm: Julius (aged 27), Montague (23), Walter (19), and Ernest (18). Other children present are Leopold (15), Annie (13), and Isabel (5). The household also contains a Dutch-born governess and 4 other servants.
1871 Census records Lawrence Hyam (brother of Isaac’s late first wife Rachel), aged 64, a “merchant clothier and outfitter”, living with his family at 9 Leinster Terrace, Bayswater. Several of Lawrence’s adult children, including Louise Frances, have their occupation recorded as “Assistant to her/his father”.
1871 The eldest son of Lawrence Hyam, Hyman Hyam, is now aged 32 and lives at 46 Leamington Road Villas, Paddington, with his wife Hanna (born 1846 in Hamburg, Germany). They have two daughters: Caroline, born 1868 and named after her grandmother who died in 1845 when Hyman was aged 6), and Bertha (1870).
1871 On 31st May Louise Frances Hyam, 21-year-old daughter of Lawrence Hyam, marries Algernon Marsden, Isaac’s first son with Esther, aged 24. This wedding is just two months after the death of Algernon’s aunt: see Death of Julia White (Gomes Silva), 1871. With Julia’s widower Edward Fox White reducing his presence as an art dealer for several years, Algernon “became active in White’s place … It was probably White’s example as a successful art dealer that inspired Marsden’s choice of new career. White may also have provided introductions to artists …. giving Marsden a flying start”. (Krystyna Matyjaszkiewicz, “Algernon Moses Marsden, ‘the most enterprising of picture dealers’, The Burlington Magazine, no 164, September 2022, pp 874-887.)
1872 Algernon appears as an art dealer in a trade directory: “ MARSDEN, Algernon M Esq, MDX, London, 18 Pembridge Villas Bayswater W “.
1872 On 6th June Algernon and his wife Louise Hyam have their first child, a son Gerald Howard Algernon, but he dies aged three months on 16th September. From 1873 to 1884 they will have seven daughters; their only surviving son Wilfrid Humphrey Algernon will be born in 1885 - followed by another two daughters.
1872 Ada Rachel Hyam is born in London, daughter of Hyman Hyam (son of Lawrence Hyam) and his wife Hanna. Later that year the household moves to Sheffield, Yorkshire, where in October Hyman Hyam opens a shop; for the next 2 months he places advertisements in ‘The Sheffield and Rotherham Independent’ which mirror those of E. Moses & Son earlier in the century.
1872 Edward Henry Beddington (formerly Moses), husband of Julia (Isaac’s first child with Rachel), dies aged 53; his death is reported in the Jewish Chronicle (Doreen Berger, “The Jewish Victorian 1871-1880”):
In December 1873 E.H Beddington’s remains would indeed be moved from West Ham to the new Willesden Cemetery . (The first person to be buried in Willesden, in October 1873, was Samuel Moses, Edward’s cousin and also his brother-in-law: Samuel married Rosetta, Edward’s eldest sister.)
1872 Montague Richard Leverson, estranged husband of Kate Hyam/Leverson (daughter of Isaac’s sister Hannah and David Hyam), who fled in 1867 to Paris and then to the United States, obtains a doctorate in the Faculty of Philosophy at Göttingen, Germany, the town where Kate Hyam/Leverson is running her first finishing school. Kate declines to accompany him back to the USA and when he submits his application for U.S naturalization the same year the remark “in company of my wife and four children” is erased. However Leverson’s application for a U.S. passport states that he is “about to travel abroad and to be accompanied by my wife and four minor children”.
In 1873 Leverson moves from New York to Colorado, where he is “in business as a rancher, and as a lawyer and lecturer in political economy”. In 1875 he writes “Draft of a Constitution for Colorado, published under the direction of a committee of citizens of Colorado”.
1873 Georgina Hester, daughter born 1851, marries Charles Lang. See Marsdens in France.
1874 In December, only two years after opening his shop in Sheffield, Hyman Hyam (son of Lawrence Hyam) is heavily in debt. His court case is reported in ‘The Sheffield and Rotherham Independent’:
A petition for the liquidation of the affairs of Mr. Hyman Hyam, clothier, of High street, has been filed in the Sheffield Bankruptcy Court …. The liabilities are roughly estimated at £7500 [about £600,000 in 2016 values]. The debtor is a member of the well-known Hyam family, clothiers, of London, and his principal creditors, we understand, are his father and uncle…… Mr. Montague, solicitor, London, appeared for the debtor’s father, Mr. Lawrence Hyam … who is a creditor for over £5482…. Mr. Montague said …. the debtor, no doubt, was a foolish young man, but his father was in no way connected with him in his business except as a creditor…. The Chairman was of the opinion that the debtor had spent his money foolishly, and that the father never really knew what was his son’s position.
The debtor was, previous to his commencing business in Sheffield, in the employment of his father, as clerk, at his establishment in Gracechurch street, London…. The debtor states that previous to his coming to Sheffield he was owing … two sums … of £200 and £500, … borrowed by the debtor for stockbroking transactions ….. in which he had become mixed up some time previous to his coming to Sheffield. Unfortunately for himself and his creditors, the debtor continued these stock speculations in Sheffield…. These later speculations … he carried on with a view to retrieve his position, but the contrary has been the result: the deficiency account showing a loss of over £1582. 6s. 5d. on these transactions, in a little over two years….
This case results not in the liquidation of Hyman Hyam’s business in Sheffield, but in his father Lawrence Hyam taking over the business and settling with the other creditors. (However, Hyman Hyam’s business would become bankrupt in 1887.)
1875 Madeline and Salomon Fallek, who married in 1867, now live in Paris. See Marsdens in France.
1875 Isaac’s mother-in-law Elizabeth Gomes Silva dies, aged 71, at their house in London. See Gomes Silva page.
1875 Barnet Joseph, husband of Isaac’s sister Fanny, dies in Kensington aged 70. Buried at Willesden.
1875 Henry Tsebi Moses, father of Julia’s late husband Edward Henry Moses/Beddington, dies aged 84. His estate is valued at “under £600,000”; his executors are his sons Maurice, Hyam Leopold, and Samuel Henry Beddington, and his grandson David Lionel Beddington.
1876 Montague (son with Rachel, born 1833) is admitted as a member of the London Stock Exchange.
1877 29th August, Isaac’s will is prepared. He bequeathes to his first born, Julia Beddington, only “the sum of one hundred pounds as a mark of my affection. And I declare that my sole reason for not making any further or other provision for my said dear daughter is that she is otherwise amply provided for.” (See above at 1849)
1877 This portrait of Algernon Marsden is painted by James Tissot, then resident in St Johns Wood, and shows the 30-year-old Algernon at the height of his success as an art dealer.
In 2022 the National Gallery and National Portrait Gallery were able to acquire the portrait thanks to the generosity of Sir Martyn Arbib and his children. Sir Martyn is a great-grandson of Algernon Marsden, the son of Richard Reuben “Dick” Arbib (1909-1975). Algernon’s portrait was done at the same time as that of his uncle and mentor as Art Dealer, Edward Fox White. Both paintings are currently displayed together at the National Portrait Gallery in London. I visited in September 2023 with my cousin, Keith Mayer.
Starting as an art dealer in 1872 aged 25, Algernon has been extraordinarily successful in just five years. He has adopted the advertising methods pioneered by E. Moses and Son, operated in different towns, and promoted new artists such as Giuseppe de Nittis and the French painter, photographer and mountaineer Gabriel Loppé. Algernon has been both energetic and personable, establishing good relationships with his artists. (Krystyna Matyjaszkiewicz, “Algernon Moses Marsden, ‘the most enterprising of picture dealers’, The Burlington Magazine, no 164, September 2022, pp 874-887.)
1877 Marion Emily Flora Montagu Marsden, born 1858, daughter of Montague (son with Rachel) and Flora Levyson, marries her cousin Barrington Meyer, born 1846, son of Isaac’s sister Sarah Moses and Meyer Meyer. They will have 4 children: Emily Flora Sarah Meyer (born 1879), Montague (1880), Richard Isaac (1882), and Percy Barrington (1884).
1878 Rodolph Isaac (son born 1853) marries Edith Grace Spyer (born 1858). Edith Grace had attended North London Collegiate School, excelling in languages, especially German for which she received prizes in 1874 and 1878. Her grandfather Jonas Spyer (1796-1880) of Gloucester Terrace, Hyde Park “was one of the oldest solicitors in the City of London, having practised for nearly sixty years, and was held in high estimation and general respect in the profession …. Mr Spyer was formerly a member of the committee of the Great and Central Synagogues, and was subsequently a life-member of the Council of the United Synagogue” (Doreen Berger, “The Jewish Victorian 1871-1880”, page 550). Edith Grace’s father Salomon Spyer of Belsize Gardens is also a solicitor. Rodolph and Edith Grace will have 10 children: Hugh Gerald (born 1879 at 9 Lawn Road, Hampstead), Ella Esther (1880), Cyril George (1882), Hubert Henry (born 1883 at 14 Buckland Crescent, died aged 6 days), Claude Eric (1884), Stanley Rodolph (born 1888 at 18 Heathfield Park, died aged 1 year), Phyllis Maud (1889), Frank Daryl (1891). Sydney Geoffrey (born 1892 at 22 Dennington Park Road, died aged 5 months), and Charles Victor (1894).
1870s Voters list shows the extensive properties owned by Isaac in St Johns Wood:
1878 Montague Richard Leverson, estranged husband of Kate Hyam/Leverson (daughter of Isaac’s sister Hannah and David Hyam), who had moved to Colorado in 1873, is a business associate of John Chisum and becomes involved in attempts to restore law and order in New Mexico at the time of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. (Frederick W. Nolan, in “The Lincoln County War: A Documentary History”, University of Oklahoma Press, 1992, devotes an appendix to Leverson.)
1879 Leverson moves from Colorado to California. Coincidentally to Leverson’s arrival in California, Henry George had recently completed the manuscript for “Progress and Poverty: An Inquiry into the Cause of Industrial Depressions and of Increase of Want with Increase of Wealth: The Remedy”. Though George’s book was destined to sell millions of copies and spark the “Progressive Era”, he was struggling to find a publisher. The role of Leverson is mentioned in the biography of George by his son, Henry George Junior:
The other circumstance of importance was the conversion of a scholarly Englishman, Dr. Montague E. Leverson, who had personally known and studied under William Ellis and John Stuart Mill, and who had in 1876 published in New York a primer of political economy for grammar and high schools and the lower colleges [“Common sense; or First steps in Political Economy”]. He had come to California to arrange for the publication and introduction of the book on the Pacific Coast, but learning of “Progress and Poverty” through Professor Joseph Le Conte of the University of California, he declared, immediately on reading it, that he had met his master in the study and that not another copy of his primer should be issued until the work had been re-written. This manifestation of rare intellectual honesty was never forgotten by Mr. George.
By 1882 Leverson served in the California legislature.
1879 Constance Rebecca (born 1852) has married Max Kiefe, £10,000 settled in codicil to Isaac’s will (equivalent to about £868,000 today). See Marsdens in France.
1880 Madeline Marsden/Fallek (first child with Esther, born 1846) dies in Paris aged 34. See Marsdens in France.
1880 David Hyam (husband of Isaac’s sister Hannah) dies aged 72 at their house, 5 Colville Square. He leaves a “Personal Estate under £14,000” and among his executors are his sons Montague (also of 5 Colville Square) and Elias, of 1 Hanover Place, Clifton, Bristol. Elias Hyam is managing the Bristol branch of Hyam & Co: in the 1881 census he is recorded as aged 24, a clothier employing 9 men.
1880 Meyer Meyer (husband of Isaac’s sister Sarah) dies aged 65 at their house, 57 Linden Gardens, Kensington. Buried at Willesden. See Marsdens in France. The 1881 Census records Sarah Meyer and household at this address. Sarah is aged 59 and is now household head. The family fur manufacturing business employs Ernest (28), and Leopold (25). The household also includes daughters Ada (17) and Isabel (15), plus a German-born governess and 6 other servants.
1881 Algernon Marsden is in serious financial trouble and on 4th August he presents a petition for liquidation, but the proceedings fall through. On 8th September a first meeting is held at the London Bankruptcy Court “for proof of debt and choice of trustee in the matter of Algernon Moses Marsden” (‘London Bankruptcy Court’, Globe, 9th September 1881, p.7). Arrangements are made for Algernon’s father Isaac to pay the creditors in order to discharge the bankruptcy. By October 1882 Algernon’s bankruptcy will be annulled and in late 1882 he would resume his business with money which had been lent to him by an unspecified source. (Krystyna Matyjaszkiewicz, “Algernon Moses Marsden, ‘the most enterprising of picture dealers’, The Burlington Magazine, no 164, September 2022, p 886.)
But meanwhile, in an 8th codicil (1881) to Isaac’s will he deals with the fact that “my said son Algernon Marsden has recently been adjudged a Bankrupt”, costing Isaac many thousands of pounds. Algernon is disinherited, but legacies are provided for his wife and children.
1881 In the census Algernon and Louise are living at 97 Linden Gardens, Kensington (the same street as Sarah Meyer and family), with five daughters aged between 1 and 7 - plus five servants. Living with them is Algernon’s niece Josephine Silva, aged 23, born in Australia, daughter of Algernon’s sister Kate and John Gomes Silva. See Gomes Silva page.
1881 The census records the household of Isaac and Esther at 4 Kensington Gardens Terrace. Isaac is listed as “Retired West Indian Merchant” aged 74; his wife Esther is aged 55. Children still at home are Herbert Philip (32, Tea Broker); Adela Louise (24); Stephen Leopold (22, West India Merchant); Isabel Blanche (20); Beatrice Helen (15); and Ida Frances (13). They have 7 servants.
1881 Census records Rodolph Isaac (son born 1853), a merchant tailor, at 9 Lawn Road, Hampstead, with his wife Edith Grace, their first 2 children, and also Rodolph’s niece Angelina Silva (aged 24), daughter of Kate Silva. They have 4 servants.
1881 Census records Montague (son with Rachel, born 1833) and family at 5 Fitzjohns Avenue, Hampstead. They have 6 children at home and 6 servants. Montague’s occupation is now “Member of London Stock Exchange”.
1881 The census records Isaac’s sister Fanny Joseph living at 104 Cambridge Gardens, Kensington. Fanny, who was widowed in 1875, has four adult children living with her: Julia, Rachel, Harry (a Colonial Broker), and Esther. Their other four children were Alfred (like his father a Woollen Draper), Kate, Annabell/Arrabella, and Montague. Fanny Joseph had since her marriage lived in Bristol, Leeds, Newcastle-upon-Tyne (where her last 5 children were born), Portsea Island (Portsmouth), and Brighton before moving to Kensington.
1881 Hyman Hyam, the eldest son of Lawrence Hyam, is now aged 42 and is a “Tailor and Woolen Draper Employing 1 Man & 1 Boy.” His household now lives at Richmond Villas, Park Lane, Sheffield, Yorkshire. There are six children including daughters Caroline (born 1868), Ada Rachel (1872) and Alice Rosetta (1878 in Sheffield).
1881 My great-grandmother Adela Louise (born 1856) marries Jacob Schwarzschild and a Marriage Settlement drawn up: see Adela Marsden page. In the same year Hettie Leverson (born 1859), daughter of Kate Hyam/Leverson and Montague Richard Leverson, marries Adolf Schwabacher in Germany. The Schwabachers, like the Schwarzschilds, are a prominent family in Frankfurt, and Jacob Schwarzschild’s mother’s sister is married to a Schwabacher.
1883 Amy, 21-year-old daughter of Montague and Flora Montagu Marsden, marries the German-born Arthur Hirschel (aged 31) at 43 Belsize Avenue, Hampstead. He operates a fur and commission merchants partnership “Herschel and Meyer” with Leopold Charles David Meyer (son of Isaac’s sister Sarah and Meyer Meyer, several of whose sons worked in the family fur manufacturing business). In 1887 the Herschel and Meyer partnership is dissolved and Arthur Hirschel continues the business.
1883 Rodolph and family have moved to 14 Buckland Crescent, Belsize Park.
1884 Isaac’s sister Fanny Joseph dies in Kensington. Buried at Willesden.
1884 My great-great grandfather Isaac Moses Marsden dies at home, 4 Kensington Gardens Terrace; his son Herbert Phillip is present at the death. The gross value of Isaac’s Estate is £96,641 1s 4d (about £8,400,000 in 2015 prices). This obituary appeared in The Times , 4th August 1884.
Isaac Marsden is buried at Willesden Cemetery of the United Synagogue, Section M, Row G1, Plot 4. (Photos by Keith Mayer) Several other family members would be buried nearby. Although some sources give Isaac’s birth year as 1809 - and this is inscribed on his tombstone - others give his birth date as 22nd September 1808; and if, as also written on his tombstone, he was 75 years old when he died on 26th July 1884 he would indeed have been born in September 1808 and not 1809.
Isaac’s will of 1877 includes 10 codicils by the time of his death in 1884 and his final will including codicils runs to 55 pages.
1885 Alfred Isaac Meyer (born 1845, aged 40), son of Isaac’s sister Sarah and Meyer Meyer, marries Emma Stahl (aged 23). A descendant, Margaret Fuller (in letters to Michael Sayers), describes Alfred Meyer as “the black sheep of the family”. The Stahl family (later known as Steele) came from Germany but were not Jewish. Also by the time of their marriage Alfred and Emma already had two sons, Alfred Walter Isaac (1883) and Herbert Arthur (1884 or early 1885). A daughter, Victoria Emily, was born in 1887. In 1888 the family emigrated to Victoria, Australia, where Alfred died in 1924 and Emma in 1926. In 1916 Herbert Arthur Meyer joined the 21st Battalion of the ANZAC forces, and in October 1918 was nominated for a Military Medal: his citation appears in the Australian War Museum database (information from Margaret Fuller).
1885 Montague (son withornia and returns to the East Coast, lecturing at the University of Virginia and publishing further on education and also on international relations (in the international language Volapuk as well as English). In 1886 he is “strongly recommended to the President of the U.S. as Commissioner of Education”.
1887 Eliza “Lizzie” Leverson (born 1865), daughter of Montague Richard Leverson and Kate Hyam/Leverson, marries John Abraham (“Jack”) Finzi in England; one of their children will be the composer Gerald Finzi.
1887 Hyman Hyam (son of Lawrence Hyam), whose business in Sheffield was in 1874 saved from bankruptcy by his father, now does become bankrupt.
1887 On 13th September Algernon is back in the bankruptcy court for the second time (the first was in 1881). “‘His business was a peculiar and speculative one’, Marsden said, ‘and it was always a “fluke” to get hold of a man with money’, raising a laugh during the court proceedings. ‘He was in the habit of gambling, and when money came in he got rid of it in that way … The money was lost on horse racing, and not by cards’, to which the Registrar commented ‘The national love of sport’“. (The Times, 14th September 1887, p.13: ‘Law Report for Sept. 13’).
Krystyna Matyjaszkiewicz observes that it was just such gambling that William Powell Frith had criticised in his 1878 series ‘The Road to Ruin’, which was followed in 1979 by his ‘Race for Wealth’ series depicting financial speculation and its consequences. “In April 1879, ‘Art gossip’ in the Aberdeen Press reported that Frith’s new series of five paintings, The Race for Wealth ‘has been bought for seven thousand guineas by [Algernon] Marsden, the most enterprising of picture dealers, and will be exhibited next year at his King Street Galleries.‘” At the peak of his success as an art dealer, Algernon had been a prolific purchaser of works Frith was sending to the Royal Academy. Frith and Marsden both lived in Pembridge Villas … so the art dealer had only a short walk to visit the artist.” (Krystyna Matyjaszkiewicz, “Algernon Moses Marsden, ‘the most enterprising of picture dealers’, The Burlington Magazine, no 164, September 2022, p 883-885.)
A Revisionist Note on Algernon Marsden, Art Dealer
As noted above, Algernon was highly successful from 1872, peaking in 1877. The date 1873 is significant for seeing “a financial crisis that triggered an economic depression in Europe and North America that lasted from 1873 to 1877 or 1879 in France and in Britain. In Britain, the Panic started two decades of stagnation known as the ‘Long Depression’ while in the United States, the Panic was known as the ‘Great Depression’ until the events of 1929 and the early 1930s set a new standard.”
Matyjaszkiewicz mentions that Algernon struck lucky in his early years as an art dealer partly because “in Knowles he found a very wealthy man embarking on building an art collection at a time of recession that little affected his income from coal …. Kaye Knowles (1835–86) was director of a Lancashire firm of colliery proprietors, Andrew Knowles & Sons, which had been converted from a partnership into a private limited company in 1873 when coal prices reached a peak in the economic boom of the late 1860s and early 1870s after the American Civil War. Kaye and his brothers had become the only shareholders, receiving considerable income from the booming company as well as a large immediate financial return in 1873”.
Algernon’s first bankruptcy was in 1881, when he was aged 34 and had been trading for 9 years, 8 years since the start of the recession of 1873. He then resumed trading from 1882 to 1887, a further 5 years. And Algernon was by no means unusual in struggling in business in the 1870s and 1880s. As detailed above, his brother-in-law Hyman Hyam was bankrupt in 1874 and 1887, while his brother Rodolph will be bankrupt in 1888.
Algernon’s personal situation should also be considered. In 1872 Algernon was aged 25 when he started as an art dealer, with presumably no previous training or experience. In that year he and his wife had their first child, a son Gerald Howard Algernon who died aged 3 months. From 1873 to 1884 Louise gave birth to a further seven daughters before the longed-for son and heir Wilfrid Humphrey Algernon Marsden was born in 1885. (Another two daughters followed in 1887 - 1889). To Algernon the seemingly unstoppable flow of baby females into his household must have been stressful. (As detailed below, several of these Marsden daughters grew up to be strong independent women who were active in the suffragette movement.)
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1888 Rodolph (son born 1853) had worked at E. Moses & Son until its dissolution in 1883, and then in October the same year started a flour merchant partnership Hülsekopf and Marsden. From 1883-1886 Rodolph made three trips to the USA and bought flour to the value of £40,000 “in the expectation of a rise in the markets”. But prices fell from 1885 and by 1886 the partnership ceased trading. Bankruptcy procedings are reported in The Times, May 5th 1888; Rodolph is represented in court by “Mr Spyer”: probably Rodolph’s father-in-law, Salomon Spyer, a solicitor aged 57. Rodolph has moved from Hampstead to 18 Heathfield Park, Willesden.
1888 Kate (second child with Rachel, born 1831) dies. Buried at Willesden. In her will she refers to the fact that her husband John Gomes Silva is in Australia having abandoned her and the children more than 15 years earlier; he had not contributed to her maintenance or that of her children, they had been supported by Isaac Marsden with assistance from Kate’s brothers Montague and Maurice. See Gomes Silva page. An executor of Kate Silva’s will is the young solicitor Leonard Levison Montagu Marsden (born 1864, son of Montague Marsden and his wife Flora).
1889 Isabel Blanche (daughter born 1861) marries Daniel Finzi at 4 Kensington Gardens Terrace. Daniel is the brother of Jack Finzi, who married Eliza “Lizzie” Leverson in 1887.
1889 Constance Rebecca (daughter born 1852) dies in Paris aged 37, after 10 years of marriage to Max Kiefe. See Marsdens in France.
1890 Algernon Marsden’s second bankruptcy (of 1887) is dismissed, and he begins trading as a Commission Agent in London.
1890 Arthur Meyer (born 1854), son of Isaac’s sister Sarah and Meyer Meyer, who has been working in India, marries Mary Ernestine Dias in Calcutta. Many of Arthur Meyer’s descendents will remain in India until Independence. But in World War 1 one son will join the ANZAC forces in Melbourne and die in France. (Thanks to Sabrina Armstrong for information about Arthur Meyer and family.)
1891 The census records Amy, 28-year-old daughter of Montague and Flora Montagu Marsden, at 20 Belsize Avenue, Hampstead with her German-born husband Arthur Hirschel (aged 38), Wholesale Fur Merchant. The household includes Amy’s two youngest brothers, Edward (aged 20) and Maurice Anthony (18), who are both Stockbroker’s Clerks.
1891 Isaac’s widow Esther is recorded at Bedford Hotel, King’s Road, Brighton, with her children Stephen Leopold (aged 32), Beatrice (25) and Ida (22).
1891 At the census Herbert Philip (son born 1848, aged 42) is recorded in his mother Esther’s household, as “living on own means”. Later that year he marries the 18-year-old Henrietta (Hetty) de Jongh: she was born in Kensington and is the daughter of Benjamin Michel de Jongh and Clara Woolf.
Herbert Marsden’s 1875 broker’s licence; Hetty de Jongh as a child
Herbert Marsden and Hetty de Jongh/Marsden
Herbert and Hetty will have 6 children: Irene Esther Beatrice (born 1896), Douglas Herbert (1898) Winifred Claire (1900), Nora Evaline (1903-1983), Violet Louise (1905), and Cedric Herbert (1908).
1891 The census shows that Algernon and family have moved to 82 Redcliffe Gardens, South Kensington; they now have 10 children of whom nine are daughters (details below at 1901 and in section on 1953 Residuary Fund).
1891 Rodolph Isaac (son born 1853), who became bankrupt in 1888, is now “commercial traveller”; he and his wife Edith Grace have 5 surviving children (2 having died in infancy).
1891 Two of the brothers of Isaac’s first wife Rachel - Lawrence Hyam and Samuel Hyam - who had married respectively Catherine and Phoebe Levy, die within 3 months of each other nd are buried at Willesden. Whereas Lawrence (of 9 Leinster Gardens) leaves only £1,217, Samuel leaves the vast fortune of £118,664 (about £10,540,000 in 2015 prices). Among his executors are 3 of his sons, who have all changed their name from Hyam to Halford, including Frederic Michael Halford (1844 - 1914) who became an authority on fly-fishing and has an entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
1891 Kate Leverson, daughter of Isaac’s sister Hannah and David Hyam, and estranged wife of Montague Richard Leverson, dies aged 52. Her finishing school, initially established in Göttingen, had moved to Hannover, and numerous advertisements appeared in the Jewish Chronicle between 1882 and 1886 extolling “the superior education and home for young ladies in North Germany conducted by Mrs. Leverson, 3 & 4 Thiergartenstrasse, Hanover”. The success of her schools is indicated by the fact that she leaves around £30,000 (equivalent to £2.6 million in 2016). Kai Schwabacher, grandson of Kate’s daughter Hettie Schwabacher, sent this photograph and writes (March 2015):
A few years ago during restoration works which I had organized on the Schwabacher-family grave, in the Jewish cemetery of Weissensee , near Berlin, much to everybody’s surprise we discovered the tombstone of Kate Hyam-Leverson which was buried under earth and vegetation. Nobody in the family knew that Kate rested there.
1891 Two of the unmarried children of Isaac’s sister Fanny Joseph (who had died in 1884), Julia (aged 56) and Montague (43), are living in Hackney, London, with their sister Esther (aged 42). Esther’s husband Maurice Latte (aged 44) is a hat & cap manufacturer and a native of Witkowo, then in Prussia but historically Polish. Maurice Latte became a British subject in 1897. He and his wife Esther would later move to Muswell Hill where he became an Insurance Agent. He died in 1925 aged 77.
1892 Isaac’s sister Sarah Meyer dies at 14 Holland Park, Kensington, aged 70. Buried at Willesden.
1892 Rodolph has moved to 22 Dennington Park Road, West Hampstead.
1893 Max Kiefe, the widower of Constance Rebecca (who had died in 1889), marries Emily Meyer, daughter of Isaac Marsden’s sister Sarah and Meyer Meyer. Emily Meyer is a 44-year-old widow. See Marsdens in France.
1893 Isaac’s sister Hannah Hyam dies in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, aged 81. In the same year Hannah Hyam’s son-in-law Montague Richard Leverson (widower of her daughter Kate) qualifies in Medicine in Baltimore, USA, at the age of 63.
1895 At the height of the scandal surrounding Oscar Wilde, when he is released on bail it is the writer Ada Leverson who stands out against public opinion and takes him into her home - “an act of courage and loyalty for which she has become justly renowned.” Ada Leverson’s husband Ernest is the son of George Bazett Colvin Leverson, diamond merchant and elder brother of Montague Richard Leverson. Ada’s father, Samuel Henry Beddington (formerly Moses) is the younger brother of Edward Henry Beddington (formerly Moses), the late husband of Julia (Isaac’s first child with Rachel).
1895 12th December, Esther’s will is prepared. Her married daughters “are already amply provided for by the provision made for them respectively by the will of my late husband.” After specific legacies the residue of Esther’s estate is divided into four equal parts for Esther’s four sons. Herbert Philip and Stephen Leopold receive their legacies directly, and are also executors of the will. The other two sons have been declared bankrupt, Algernon in 1881 and 1887, and Rodolph in 1888, so trustees are set up to manage their legacies. Algernon’s trustees are his brother-in-law Stephen Simon Hyam, 11 Poultry, London, solicitor; Avigdor Lewis Bernstingl, 5 Pembroke Gardens, Kensington; and Algernon’s wife Louise Frances. Rodolph’s trustees are two brothers-in-law Walter Spyer, 53 New Broad Street, London, solicitor and Arthur Spyer, 11 Fordwych Road, Brondesbury, London, Crown Civil Servant; and Rodolph’s wife Edith Grace. (Rodolph’s father-in-law Salomon Spyer, who represented him at his bankruptcy hearing in 1888, died aged 62 in 1893, but several of his sons - including Walter, born 1861 - have followed him into the legal profession.) Esther’s will also specifies that Algernon’s and Rodolph’s legacies are to be reduced by any money already used to repay their debts since 25th May 1892
1898 Two of the brothers of Julia’s late husband Edward Henry Moses/Beddington, die and are buried at Willesden. Hyam Leopold Beddington leaves £493,544; Maurice Beddington, partner in H.E. & M. Moses, leaves £1,030,574 (equivalent to £93.6 million in 2016). Maurice’s London address is in Hyde Park but he dies at his country home, “The Limes”, Carshalton, Surrey: this is close to the village of Beddington from which the descendants of Henry Tsebi Moses took their name.
1899 Montague (son with Rachel, born 1833) dies at 17 Belsize Avenue, Hampstead. Buried at Willesden. He had worked in E. Moses & Son as a young man, but in the 1871 census was a General Merchant and in 1881 a Stockbroker. In the same year his solicitor son, Leonard Levison Montagu Marsden, marries Laura Annie Baker.
1900 Montague Richard Leverson, widower of Kate Hyam/Leverson (daughter of Isaac’s sister Hannah and David Hyam), gives a speech “In the Name of Liberty” at the Anti-Imperialistic Conference, Philadelphia, February 22-23. The Anti-Imperialist League denounced the U.S. counter-insurgency in the Philippines from 1899 to 1902, during which American troops killed between 250,000 and 600,000 - and possibly as many as a million - Filipinos. But having qualified in Medicine in 1893, Leverson’s primary interest is now homeopathy, and in 1901 he publishes an article in “The Homeopathic Recorder”.
1900 11th January. In a codicil to her will of 1895, Esther gives an additional bequest of £500 (£43,000 in 2015) to Herbert Philip “by way of recognition of the many years of valuable assistance that he has rendered to me and our family generally.” Regarding Algernon, Esther deducts from his legacy £1300 (£117,500 in 2015) already spent in the four years since the will was drawn up in December 1895. “And whereas for many years I have expended very large sums of money in providing for the maintenance of my son Algernon and his wife and the maintenance and education of his family for these reasons I am desirous in justice to my other sons to modify the provision contained in my said will …”
1901 14th March. Esther prepares a second codicil to her will of 1895 to take account of her move from 4 Kensington Gardens Terrace, London, to Hove in Sussex. Although the codicil records her residence from 25 March as 31 Brunswick Terrace, the 1901 census records a 75-year-old Esther at 11 Brunswick Terrace, Hove, with son Stephen Leopold (42) and daughters Beatrice (35) and Ida (32). Her seven servants include her maid A.M.C. (Caroline) Flatman, aged 25 and from Oxford, who witnessed both her codicils.
1901 Algernon becomes bankrupt for at least the third time and flees to the USA, abandonning his wife Louise and their 10 children. At the census Louise Marsden is aged 51; Sybil (27) is a dressmaker and employer; Hilda (26) a “sweet and bon-bon maker”; Muriel is 25; Dora (24), Olga (18), and Madeline (16) are all either governesses or teachers. The other children are Wilfrid (15), Mildred (13), and Constance (11).
Also recorded at the house of Louise Marsden in the 1901 census is Effie Josephine Gwendoline (aged 20). Having completed her education at Kensington High School for Girls in 1899, she had joined the research group of the physical organic chemist Edward Baly at UCL. “Using absorption spectroscopy, she made major contributions to the study of keto-enol tautomerism… Between 1905 and 1910 she co-authored five papers with Baly.” (Marelene and Geoffrey Rayner-Canham, “Pioneering British Women Chemists: Their Lives And Contributions”, World Scientific Publishing, 2020, p116.)
1901 Census shows that Rodolph Isaac (son born 1853) is “Secretary to public company”. His children recorded are Hugh Gerald (aged 22, working on own account as manufacturer’s agent), Ella Esther (21), Claude Eric (16, stock exchange clerk), Phyllis Maud (11), Frank Daryl (10) and Charles Victor (6).
1901 Census records Herbert Philip (son born 1848), aged 53, “Retired Tea Broker”, at 6 Randolph Crescent, Maida Vale, with his wife of 10 years Henrietta Elizabeth (aged 28); they have 3 children and 6 servants.
1901 The census records Isabel and Daniel Finzi living in the same street as Jack Finzi and family - Hamilton Terrace, St John’s Wood. Isabel and Daniel have two children Eric (3) and Eva (1), and the family includes Rachel Lizzie Gwendoline (aged 15), Daniel’s daughter with his first wife who died soon after childbirth in 1886; the household also has five servants. Also in 1901 Eliza “Lizzie” Leverson, wife of Jack Finzi, gives birth to her fifth child Gerald Finzi, the future composer.
1901 Census shows that Flora Marsden, 70-year-old widow of Montague (who died in 1899) has remained at 17 Belsize Avenue, Hampstead with her recently married solicitor son Leonard Levison Montagu Marsden.
1902 Stephen Leopold (son born 1858) marries in Scotland; his wife is Augusta Rebecca Morris (known as Gussie), born in Glasgow in 1869. Gussie was previously married to a David Schloss, with whom she had no children. Stephen Leopold Marsden and his new wife Gussie live at 53 Lexham Gardens, Kensington, where their children are born: in 1903 Claire Esther (and a twin who died soon after birth); and in 1909 Gerald Stephen Maurice. (Information from Misty Simons: Gussie was the daughter of Misty’s great-great-aunt.)
1904 Leopold Meyer, son of Isaac’s sister Sarah and Meyer Meyer, dies and is buried at Willesden. See Marsdens in France.
1906 Daniel Finzi, husband of Isabel Blanche (daughter born 1861), dies aged 52
1906 Cyril George Marsden, son of Rodolph Isaac, dies aged 23 of wounds received at the battle of Mome Gorge during the Bambatha Uprising in South Africa. His War Grave in Durban records that he was a Lieutenant in the Royston’s Horse regiment. Cyril Marsden was one of the few colonial troops killed suppressing the uprising.
1906 Algernon appears in a New York City Directory at 299 Broadway; he is listed under Mining, and presumably is a broker.
1908 Montague Richard Leverson, widower of Kate Hyam/Leverson (daughter of Isaac’s sister Hannah and David Hyam), after several years of correspondence with Antoine Béchamp, visits him in Paris and remains until Béchamp’s death 14 days later, in April 1908. Leverson is prominent in the anti-vaccination movement. The book “Béchamp or Pasteur? A lost chapter in the history of biology”, by E. Douglas Hume; founded upon ms. by Montague R. Leverson, Covici-McGee, Chicago, would eventually be published in 1923. It received this review in “Nature”, January 1924.
But 30 years later Leverson’s contribution was discussed rather more positively in “The Medical Mischief You Say! (Degerminating the Germ Theory)” by Nell & Guy Rogers, 1951, Health Research Books, California:
Dr. Montague R. Leverson, M.D., M.A., Ph.D., of Baltimore, chanced upon some of Béchamp’s writings in 1907 …. In several months of close associatiom, Dr. Leverson had from the savant Béchamp first hand criticisms of science, and a personal account of Béchamp’s amazing discoveries in chemistry and biology. Himself too old to research with the vigor and clarity his new power-packed notes demanded, Dr. Leverson enlisted the help of Ethel Douglas Hume.
Dr. Leverson on several occasions rescued deserving causes from threatened oblivion, among them Henry George’s “Progress and Poverty”. George had been turned down by every publisher he tried to interest, and had started to set the type for his book by hand, when Dr. Leverson learned of the case and came to the assistance of the man, now among the world’s great. George and Béchamp; Dr. Leverson carried their torches, and our gratitude to George and Béchamp may be but the back-drop for the intense, close-up emotion Dr. Leverson’s grand unselfish service floodlights into our lives. God bless such people!
1908 On 6th December Isaac’s second wife Esther, my great-great-grandmother, dies in Hove aged 83. Buried at Willesden, next to her late husband. Her probate value is £33,526 - equivalent to £2.8 million in 2015.
1908 Algernon’s wife Louise has remained at 82 Redcliffe Gardens: this address is mentioned in the notice in the Jewish Chronicle regarding the marriage of one of the daughters, Dora Helen Edith (born 1876) to Guiseppe Arbib (born c.1866 in Alexandria, Egypt). Dora and Guiseppe Arbib will have three sons: Richard Reuben (“Dick”, 1909-1975), Albert Maurice (“Billy”, 1911-1981), and John Reginald (1914-2003).
Louise Hyam Marsden, wife of Algernon; Richard and Billy Arbib, c.1914.
1908 Another of the daughters of Algernon and Louise, Madeline Joan Adela (born 1884) marries Frederick Lawrence Levy (1880 - 1961), born in Kensington and like his father Nathaniel Levy a Stock Jobber. They were already engaged when, in 1906, Madeline was a bridesmaid at the wedding of Frederick’s brother Robert Stephen Levy (‘Jewish Chronicle’, 4th May 1906).
1909 Ida Frances (Isaac’s daughter born 1868), aged 41, marries Lionel Henry Rosenthal, an Irish lawyer aged 53. Lionel is the son of the Irish lawyer John D. Rosenthal, LLD, Deputy of the Dublin Jewish Congregation. From the age of 16 Lionel was frequently mentioned in the Jewish Chronicle (1872 - 1878) as an exceptionally brilliant student, winning distinctions and prizes at Trinity College, Dublin, in Mathematics, Hebrew, German, Logic, Ethics, English Literature, Metaphysics, and Moral Philosophy (Doreen Berger, “The Jewish Victorian 1871-1880”, page 477). He then followed his father into the law and was called to the English Bar in 1879. In the 1881 census Lionel is listed aged 24, practising at the Bar and a lodger at 49 Gloucester Place, London; in the 1880s he lived at 146 Portsdown Road, Maida Vale (known from 1939 as Randolph Avenue).
In spite of marrying aged 41, Ida will have 3 children, all born in Dublin: John David (born 1910), May Esther (1911), and Beatrice Florence (1913).
1909 Jack Finzi, brother of Daniel Finzi the late husband of Isabel Blanche, dies aged 49, shortly before the 8th birthday of his youngest child, the future composer Gerald Finzi. All three of Gerald Finzi’s brothers would die young: Douglas of pneumonia aged 15 in 1912; Felix John of a possible overdose in India, aged 20 in 1913 (Diana McVeagh, “Gerald Finzi: His Life and Music”, Boydell Press, 2005); and Edgar Cecil, aged 19, on service with the RAF over Greece in September 1918. Gerald Finzi’s sister Kate, born in 1890, uses the name “Kate John Finzi” at the 1911 census and when publishing “Eighteen Months in the War Zone: the record of a woman’s work on the Western front” (May 1916). In 1917 Kate will marry Alexander Gilmour and use the name “Kay Gilmour” for her books “Finland” (1931) and “Committee Procedure” (1950). Kate will divorce in 1930, she is living in Essex in 1939 (“retired author and journalist”) and dies in Colchester in 1958.
1910 Algernon appears in the U.S. Census at West 66th Street, Manhattan. He is a broker aged 63, and has a wife Margaret Marsden, aged 32 and born in Spain. It is recorded that they have been married for 8 years and have no children; that Algernon arrived in the U.S. in 1900 and Margaret in 1901.
1911 Census records Stephen Leopold Marsden (son born 1858) now living at 67 The Drive, Hove. He is aged 52, his wife Gussie Rebecca is 42, daughter Claire is 7 and son Gerald Stephen is 2. They have four servants. Beatrice Marsden (aged 45) is living at 35 Brunswick Terrace, Hove.
1911 Census records Herbert Philip (son born 1848), aged 62, living at 6 Randolph Crescent, Maida Vale, with his wife Henrietta Elizabeth (aged 38) and 5 of their 6 children - plus 5 servants. Their son Douglas, aged 12, is recorded in the census boarding at an address in Hove together with a private tutor who is German. Perhaps strangely, he is staying with neither his uncle or aunt living in Hove. The youngest child, Cedric Herbert, is now aged 3. Cedric would marry Honor (daughter of Dr Nathaniel Lucas and Floretta Sebag-Montefiore); he died in 2005 aged 97 and is buried at Willesden. Cedric’s son Hugh Marsden lives in West London and his daughter Celia Josephs in Washington D.C.
Hetty Marsden (wife of Herbert Philip) with their first 5 children, c. 1905; the 6th child Cedric aged 3, 1911
1911 Census records Maurice Isaac Marsden (son born 1832), aged 79, and his wife Amelia Marsden aged 65 living in the boarding house Yarnton, 19 St Paul’s Road, Bournemouth.
1911 Census records Rodolph Isaac (son born 1853), aged 56, living at 22 Park Avenue, Cricklewood, London with his wife Edith Grace, aged 52. Rodolph is now a Chartered Secretary. Though he himself was bankrupt in 1888, he now acts as Liquidator of several companies between 1908 and 1916, with offices at Finsbury-circus-buildings, 18 Eldon Street, London EC: this is mentioned in ‘The London Gazette’. Four of the children of Rodolph and Edith are at home: Hugh Gerald (aged 32, still working on own account as manufacturer’s agent - in “laces and embroideries”), Phyllis Maud (21, a teacher), Frank Daryl (20, accountant) and Charles Victor (16, naval cadet). Their son Claude Eric (now aged 26) has left home: in 1920, when his first child was born, he was in Shanghai, China; by 1923 he and his family were living in South Africa, and Claude Eric died in Johannesburg in 1958.
1911 Census records Isabel Finzi (daughter born 1861) still living at 32 Hamilton Terrace with her son Eric (13), daughter Eva (11), and step-daughter “Gwendoline” (Rachel Lizzie Gwendoline) aged 25. Eva Harriett Finzi never married; she was an artist in watercolours and died in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, in 1981.
1911 At the census Algernon’s wife Louise is still living at 82 Redcliffe Gardens; the only one of her children recorded on the census is Hilda, aged 36, who is working at home as a dressmaker. Louise Marsden’s eldest daughter Sybil, now aged 38, has been running a dressmaking establishment “Madame Mantalini” for 16 years (in 1911 at 69 Kensington Church Street). She responds to the call of the more militant suffragette societies by boycotting the 1911 census and writes one of the longest of any refusal statement, as reported by Elizabeth Crawford, author of several books on the Suffrage Movement.
1911 One of the married daughters of Algernon and Louise, Madeline Levy, is living at 23 Priory Court Mansions, Mazenod Avenue, Kilburn, with her husband Frederick and their son George Levy, aged 1 year. Madeline is not at home for the census and Frederick writes this statement on the form:
Four of the unmarried Marsden sisters - Sybil, Muriel, Mildred, and Constance - were active members of the Women’s Social and Political Union or WSPU. In 1910 when the WSPU ran a national sales competition among its newspaper-selling members, third prize was won by “Miss Constance Marsden of South Kensington” who sold 1,448 copies.
Constance Marsden was a professional photographer. In 1913 her “Portrait of Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst” was accepted by the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain for an exhibition at the Royal Society of British Artists in Central London (Elizabeth Crawford, “The Women’s Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide”, Routledge, 2003, p.548.) In 1915 she took this photograph of Patuffa Kennedy-Fraser, the harpist who with her mother Marjory collected and performed Hebridean songs; when the rare brooch was sold by Hill House in 2015 the photograph was included, the dealers noting that it was signed by “Constance Marsden, the famous period/society photographer”.
1911 Census records Barrington Meyer (aged 64, insurance agent, son of Isaac’s sister Sarah Moses) and his wife Marion (aged 52, grand-daughter of Isaac Marsden) living at 181 Adelaide Road, Hampstead, with their sons Montague (aged 30), Richard Isaac (28), and Percy Barrington (26). The census records Montague as a Timber Merchant; he had in fact started a job as a timber salesman in 1896, at the age of about 15. He was extraordinarily successful, and by 1906 left to found his own company, Montague L. Meyer Ltd. This became a major international timber merchant as still trades as Meyer Timber. The daughter of Barrington and Marion Meyer, Emily Flora Sarah (aged 31) lives nearby at 7 Eton Avenue, Hampstead. Emily’s husband Louis Pianciani Leverson (aged 48), a tobacco merchant, is a son of Montague Richard Leverson and Kate Hyam/Leverson, and grandson of Isaac’s sister Hannah. In 1911 Emily Meyer-Leverson gives birth to her second child, Katherine Leverson. Katherine would marry Harry Rantzen and their daughter Esther Rantzen was born in 1940. In this picture (kindly supplied by Esther Rantzen) the baby in her mother Emily’s arms is the first child, Marion Kate, born in August 1909; seated on the left is the baby’s grandmother Marion Marsden, and on the right her great-grandmother Flora (widow of Montague Montagu Marsden).
The 1911 Census records Flora, aged 80, still at 17 Belsize Avenue, Hampstead, and head of a household which now includes her daughter Amy (aged 48) and son-in-law Arthur Hirschel (aged 58). The Hirschels have been married 27 years and have no children. Arthur Hirschel, like his mother-in-law Flora, was born in Germany; he is a Fur Merchant and an employer. The household has 7 servants. Flora’s solicitor son Leonard Levison Montagu Marsden and his wife Laura Annie Montagu Marsden also live in Hampstead, at 2 Ellerdale Mansions, Fitzjohn’s Avenue. Aged 46 and 44, they have been married since 1899 and have no children. (When Arthur Hirschel dies in 1913, his brother-in-law Leonard Levison Montagu Marsden, whose office is at 16 King Street, Cheapside, EC, is executor of his will.)
1912 Maurice Isaac Marsden (third child and first son with Rachel, born 1832) dies in Bournemouth. Buried at Willesden. Executors of his will include his widow Amelia and his brothers Herbert Philip, and Stephen Leopold. The net value of Maurice’s Estate is £20,206 15s 1d (about £1,642,000 in 2013 prices). Maurice’s will runs to 22 pages. It includes funds for the establishment of the Isaac Moses Marsden Memorial Scholarship at the Jews College in London. See also Marsdens in France. Maurice’s bequests are mentioned in ‘The Times’ of 20 March:
1912 It is reported in ‘The Times’ that Algernon is bankrupt again but not present at the hearing as he is living in New York.
1912 Montague Richard Leverson, widower of Kate Hyam/Leverson (daughter of Isaac’s sister Hannah and David Hyam), aged 82, marries Ethel May Charlton, an English woman, a teacher aged 43. Leverson has been involved in the anti-vaccination movement since his visit to Béchamp in Paris 1907-08 and had published “Inoculations and the germ theory of disease: The suppressed memoir” in 1911, and in the same year delivered a lecture “Pasteur the plagiarist: The debt of sciences to Béchamp” in London for the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection. In 1913 Leverson and his second wife leave the U.S.A. to travel in France and Italy; at the outbreak of War in 1914 they return to England and settle in Bournemouth.
1913 Many properties from the estate of Isaac Marsden are sold by auction. This notice appeared in ‘The Times’ of 7 June:
And this in ‘The London Gazette’ of 13 June: references by J. M. Marsden should be I. M. (Isaac Moses) Marsden:
(The leasehold titles to 151 and 153 The Minories had been recorded at the Land Registry in 1911 to Herbert Philip Marsden, Stephen Leopold Marsden, and Jacob Schwarzschild.)
1913 One of the daughters of Algernon and Louise, Effie Josephine Gwendoline (born 1880), who had pursued a 14-year career in physical chemistry (see above at 1901), marries Reginald Saul Solomon; in 1914 their daughter Elizabeth Annette Solomon is born.
1914 On 6th December Mildred Marsden, one of the suffragette daughters of Algernon and Louise, dies aged 27. Buried at Willesden. On her death certificate the informant is her sister Sybil, and the address of both sisters (withheld at the 1911 census) is their mother’s house, 82 Redcliffe Gardens, Kensington. Mildred’s death takes place at 83 Manchester Road, Chorlton cum Hardy, South Manchester; she was employed as a Motor Manufacturer’s Clerk. She dies of heart failure after 4 days of pneumonia, but although Mildred is included in the Roll of Honour of Suffragette Prisoners 1905-1914 examination of the Suffragette newspaper for the period 1913-1915 indicates that Mildred was never subjected to force-feeding, and was probably never imprisoned, though she did appear before London magistrates at Bow Street (19th November 1910) and Mansion House (18th July 1913).
1915 Julia (first child with Rachel, born 1828) dies, aged 87. She had lived for many years at 98 Lancaster Gate, Bayswater. Buried at Willesden.
1915 Frederick Lawrence Levy, husband of Madeline, travels to New York to visit his father-in-law Algernon Marsden. He leaves Liverpool on 1 May on the SS St Louis - the same day the SS Lusitania leaves New York. Frederick arrives safely in New York on 10 May, but on 7 May the Lusitania is sunk by a German U-boat off the coast of Ireland.
1916 Wilfrid Humphrey Algernon Marsden, son of Algernon and Louise, is an Acting-Sergeant in the Royal Army Medical Corps (Canadian Army), based at the army camp at Shorncliffe in Kent. Wilfrid emigrated to Canada in 1910. Visiting England in 1913, aged 27, his occupation was typist. In 1915, already a member of the AMC in the Canadian militia, he volunteered for the Canadian Expeditionary Force.
1917 Douglas Herbert, 18-year-old son of Herbert Philip and Hetty Marsden, has joined the army, while Hetty is nursing.
Douglas Marsden and his mother Hetty serving in World War 1
Rachel Beddington (born 1851), one of the children of Isaac’s daughter Julia Moses and Edward Beddington, married Hyman Moses Montagu; their granddaughter Iris Rachel Solomon married Captain Ewen Montagu (son of Louis Samuel Montagu, 2nd Baron Swaythling) who in 1943 would become famous for his role in Operation Mincemeat. Ewen Montagu’s uncle was Edwin Samuel Montagu.
Edwin Montagu’s cousin was Herbert Samuel, who had renounced Judaism as a religious faith in 1892, and joined Asquith’s Government in 1909.
One month after Britain’s declaration of war on the Ottoman Empire in November 1914, Samuel met Chaim Weizmann, who was to become the President of the World Zionist Organization and later the first President of Israel. According to Weizmann’s memoirs, Samuel was already an avid believer in Zionism and believed that Weizmann’s demands were too modest… In January 1915, Samuel circulated a memorandum, The Future of Palestine, to his cabinet colleagues, suggesting that Britain should conquer Palestine in order to protect the Suez Canal against foreign powers, and for Palestine to become a home for the Jewish people. The memorandum stated, “I am assured that the solution of the problem of Palestine which would be much the most welcome to the leaders and supporters of the Zionist movement throughout the world would be the annexation of the country to the British Empire”. In March 1915, Samuel replaced the January 1915 draft version with the final version of his memorandum, toned down from the earlier draft, explicitly ruling out any idea of immediately establishing a Jewish state and emphasizing that non-Jews must receive equal treatment under any scheme.
Herbert Samuel left the Government when Asquith was replaced by Lloyd George in 1916, but his 1915 proposals for establishing a British protectorate over Palestine influenced the Balfour Declaration. From 1920-1925 Samuel was First High Commissioner to Palestine.
Samuel’s appointment to High Commissioner for Palestine was controversial. While the Zionists welcomed the appointment of a Zionist Jew to the post, the military government, headed by Edmund Allenby and Louis Bols, called Samuel’s appointment “highly dangerous”. Technically, Allenby noted, the appointment was illegal, as a civil administration that would compel the inhabitants of an occupied country to express their allegiance to it before a formal peace treaty (with the Ottoman Empire) was signed violated both military law and the Hague Convention. Bols said the news was received with “consternation, despondency and exasperation” by the Muslims and Christians. Allenby said that the Arabs would see it “as handing country over at once to a permanent Zionist Administration” and predicted massive violence.
Lord Curzon read the last message to Samuel and asked him to reconsider accepting the post. Samuel took advice from a delegation in London representing the Zionists, who told him that the “alarmist” reports were not justified. The Muslim-Christian Association had sent a telegram to Bols: “Sir Herbert Samuel regarded as a Zionist leader, and his appointment as first step in formation of Zionist national home in the midst of Arab people contrary to their wishes. Inhabitants cannot recognise him, and Muslim-Christian Society cannot accept responsibility for riots or other disturbances of peace.”
The wisdom of appointing Samuel was debated in the House of Lords a day before he arrived in Palestine. Lord Curzon said that no “disparaging” remarks had been made during the debate but that “very grave doubts have been expressed as to the wisdom of sending a Jewish Administrator to the country at this moment”.
Questions in the House of Commons of the period also show much concern about the choice of Samuel: “what action has been taken to placate the Arab population… and thereby put an end to racial tension”. Three months after his arrival, The Morning Post commented: “Sir Herbert Samuel’s appointment as High Commissioner was regarded by everyone, except Jews, as a serious mistake.”
Herbert Samuel’s cousin Edwin Montagu joined Lloyd George’s Government in August 1917, and immediately wrote a remarkable critique of the Balfour Declaration, and of Zionism, from the perspective of an observant Jew.
Zionism has always seemed to me to be a mischievous political creed, untenable by any patriotic citizen of the United Kingdom. If a Jewish Englishman sets his eyes on the Mount of Olives and longs for the day when he will shake British soil from his shoes and go back to agricultural pursuits in Palestine, he has always seemed to me to have acknowledged aims inconsistent with British citizenship and to have admitted that he is unfit for a share in public life in Great Britain, or to be treated as an Englishman….It seems to be inconceivable that Zionism should be officially recognised by the British Government, and that Mr. Balfour should be authorized to say that Palestine was to be reconstituted as the “national home of the Jewish people”. I do not know what this involves, but I assume that it means that Mahommedans and Christians are to make way for the Jews and that the Jews should be put in all positions of preference and should be peculiarly associated with Palestine in the same way that England is with the English or France with the French, that Turks and other Mahommedans in Palestine will be regarded as foreigners, just in the same way as Jews will hereafter be treated as foreigners in every country but Palestine. Perhaps also citizenship must be granted only as a result of a religious test.
I assert that there is not a Jewish nation …..When the Jews are told that Palestine is their national home, every country will immediately desire to get rid of its Jewish citizens, and you will find a population in Palestine driving out its present inhabitants, taking all the best in the country …
I certainly do not dissent from the view, commonly held, as I have always understood, by the Jews before Zionism was invented, that to bring the Jews back to form a nation in the country from which they were dispersed would require Divine leadership. I have never heard it suggested, even by their most fervent admirers, that either Mr. Balfour or Lord Rothschild would prove to be the Messiah….
I deny that Palestine is to-day associated with the Jews or properly to be regarded as a fit place for them to live in. The Ten Commandments were delivered to the Jews on Sinai. It is quite true that Palestine plays a large part in Jewish history, but so it does in modern Mahommendan history, and, after the time of the Jews, surely it plays a larger part than any other country in Christian history. The Temple may have been in Palestine, but so was the Sermon on the Mount and the Crucifixion. I would not deny to Jews in Palestine equal rights to colonisation with those who profess other religions, but a religious test of citizenship seems to me to be the only admitted by those who take a bigoted and narrow view of one particular epoch of the history of Palestine, and claim for the Jews a position to which they are not entitled.
I have always recognised the unpopularity, much greater than some people think, of my community… and I can easily understand that many a non-Jew in England wants to get rid of us. But just as there is no community of thought and mode of life among Christian Englishmen, so there is not among Jewish Englishmen…. But when the Jew has a national home, surely it follows that the impetus to deprive us of the rights of British citizenship must be enormously increased. Palestine will become the world’s Ghetto. Why should the Russian give the Jew equal rights? His national home is Palestine… All Jews will be foreign Jews, inhabitants of the great country of Palestine.
I would say to Lord Rothschild that the Government will be prepared to do everything in their power to obtain for Jews in Palestine complete liberty of settlement and life on an equality with the inhabitants of that country who profess other religious beliefs. I would ask that the Government should go no further. E.S.M. 23 August 1917
In 1925 Herbert Samuel’s niece Clara married my great uncle Percy Schwarzschild.
1918 The 13-year-old daughter of Herbert Philip and Hetty Marsden, Violet Louise, dies. Buried at Willesden. In the same year their 22-year-old daughter Irene Esther Beatrice marries Julius Friedlander: born in Glasgow in 1889, his mother Isabel Rose Meyer was the daughter of Meyer Meyer and Sarah Moses (sister of Isaac Marsden). Irene will die in Edinburgh in 1951.
1918 Flora (born Levyson), widow of Montague Montagu Marsden, dies. Buried at Willesden. One of their children, Maurice Anthony (born 1872), “was quite a character and had an adventurous life. He was a pelagic seal hunter in the Pribilof Islands near the Bering sea. He was …. in Dawson City as an Assayer for the Klondike Gold Rush. He went to South Africa for the Second Boer War [1899-1902] and then started diamond mining. The Cullinan Diamond (on the end of the Queen’s Sceptor, stored in the Tower of London) was discovered in the mine he developed. Upon returning to Canada he was a foreman for concrete form work for railway trestles in British Colombia. He served in WW1 in France and was injured.” (Thanks to Heidi Fraser, great-granddaughter of Maurice Anthony Montagu Marsden, for this information.) In June 1899 - between Klondike and the Boer War - Maurice Anthony married Ada Marion Solloway in St Paul’s Church, Vancouver, the denomination of both parties being recorded as Church of England.
1920 Algernon dies in New York. This tombstone inscription is in Mt. Hope Cemetery, Rochester, New York:
“MARSDEN Algernon Moses of London, Eng.; d Jan 23, 1920 æ 72y” [at the age of 72 years].
1921 Madeline Levy, daughter of Algernon and Louise Marsden, gives birth to her second child, Robert, who would become an actor. As adults both Robert and his brother George (born in 1910) would reject the surname Levy, preferring Marsden. In 1953 their father Frederick, at the age of 74, changed his surname by Deed Poll to Marsden-Levy; when in 1961 he died at 42 Frognall Court, Hampstead, one of the executors was “Robert Marsden-Levy actor”. When Madeline died in 1966 her probate was also in the name Marsden-Levy, and her address was 11A Maresfield Gardens, Hampstead.
Around this time (1921) the marriage of Madeline’s sister Dora to Guiseppe Arbib ends in divorce. In electoral rolls for the 1930s Dora and her 3 sons are recorded in Farm Avenue, Hendon, North London.
1921 Percy Barrington Meyer (born 1884), a son of Barrington Meyer and his wife Marion, has married Eleanor Rachel (Nora) Benjamin and they have two sons, Peter (born 1916) and Dick (1919). Now in 1921 their third son Michael Leverson Meyer is born. Upon the death of Michael Meyer in 2000 obituaries such as that in The Guardian would hail him as the greatest ever translator of Ibsen and Strindberg into English. Michael Meyer would never marry, but he had a long-term relationship with Maria Rossman, and their daughter Eleanor Rachel (Nora) Meyer was born in 1968.
1921 At the census Algernon’s widow Louise is living with 5 of her unmarried daughters. Sybil is still the proprietor of her dressmaking establishment in Kensington. Hilda is working at home as a corsetiere. Muriel is on “home duties”. Olga works as a dressmaker’s model in the West End. And Constance’s photography business is at 33 Upper Baker Street. The household includes two boarders, one of whom is the artist Mabel Greenberg (1880-1933) whose family were prominent silversmiths in Birmingham.
1922 Muriel Alice Marsden, daughter of Algernon and Louise dies aged 46. Buried at Willesden.
1923 Douglas Herbert, 25-year-old son of Herbert Philip and Hetty Marsden, travels (First Class) by ship to Brisbane, Australia. His occupation is “Agent”.
1924 Algernon’s widow Louise dies in Kensington. Buried at Willesden.
1924 Hugh Gerald Marsden, son of Rodolph Isaac, dies aged 45 at The Royal Hospital for Incurables in Putney, London (where his cousin Evelina would die in 1959). Buried at Willesden. He leaves £335, to be administered by his accountant brother Frank Daryl. Augusta Rebecca, wife of Stephen Leopold, dies. Buried at Willesden.
1925 Winifred Claire, 25-year-old daughter of Herbert Philip and Hetty Marsden, marries the 58-year-old Benjamin Woolf Castello: Woolf being his mother’s maiden name he was possibly related to Hetty’s mother’s family, also Woolf. Born in Kensington in 1867, in the 1911 census Benjamin Woolf Castello was aged 44, living alone at 7 Park Place, St James, London, a Stock Jobber and employer. In 1937 they were living at 16 St John’s Wood Court, St John’s Wood, and Benjamin died aged 70; Winifred Claire inherited his estate of £94,526 (about £4.5 million at 2015 values). She died 50 years later in 1987.
1925 On 26th September Montague Richard Leverson dies, aged 95, at 79 Irving Road, Southbourne (Bournemouth). The widower of Kate Hyam/Leverson (daughter of Isaac’s sister Hannah and David Hyam), Leverson lived in the United States from 1868. He had returned to England with his second wife in 1914, and in 1922 had successfully (re-)applied for British naturalization at the age of 92.
The composer Gerald Finzi, son of Leverson’s daughter Lizzie, admired his grandfather enough to make notes on his life (Diana McVeagh, “Gerald Finzi: His Life and Music”, Boydell Press, 2005, p5). In 1931 Finzi shared these notes and a collection of newspaper articles with his cousin William Donald Schwabacher, son of Leverson’s daughter Hettie. This material is now in the possesion of William Donald’s son, Kai Schwabacher, who has kindly made it available to me (including translations from German). An obituary of Leverson in the local Bournemouth newspaper says:
…. As to Pasteurism it was he who chiefly pointed out the debt civilisation owes to Professor Antoine Béchamp of Montpellier, whose discoveries were the foundation of the work carried on by the Pasteur Institute…. [He] was also specially interested in the subject of vivisection and vaccination and fearlessly expressed his views…. The funeral took place at the Boscombe Cemetery … and was conducted by the … Vicar of St. James, West Southbourne, which church the deceased had attended when his health permitted.
1928 Wilfrid Humphrey Marsden (son of Algernon) marries Dorothy Darling Wilson in York, Ontario. He is aged 42 and a business manager, she is 36, a bank clerk and an Anglican. Their daughter Fleur Sybil will be born in 1929, the name Sybil presumably after Wilfrid’s eldest sister.
1928 Stephen Leopold (son born 1858) now lives at North Gate, Regents Park, London, W8. From this address he writes a letter following the death of Guy Meyer: see Marsdens in France.
1929 My great-grandfather Jacob Schwarzschild dies.
1932 Lionel Henry Rosenthal, husband of Ida Frances (Isaac’s daughter born 1868), dies while playing bridge in his native Dublin, aged 76. His death notice in the Jewish Chronicle states that he was “on many occasions a Deputy County Court Judge”.
1932 Hetty Marsden, wife of Herbert Philip (Isaac’s son born 1848), dies aged 60.
Four grandchildren of Algernon: Elizabeth Annette Solomon (daughter of Effie), Richard and Billy Arbib (sons of Dora), and George Marsden Levy (son of Madeline).
1932 Elizabeth Annette Solomon, aged 18, daughter of Effie Solomon and grand-daughter of Algernon Marsden, is working as assistant to the photographer known as “Madame Yevonde”, and poses for these two portraits. Elizabeth herself donated them to the National Portrait Gallery shortly before her death in 2004. Her surname changed to Lee in 1955 when she became the second wife of Reginald Edward Lee; Reginald’s first wife, Kathleen Mozelle Levy, who had died a few months earlier, was a daughter of Robert Levy and niece of his brother Frederick Levy (husband of Madeline, one of Effie’s sisters.)
1933 Some of the single daughters of Algernon and Louise Marsden live in Hampstead: there are phone directory entries for “The Misses Marsden” at 27 Lyncroft Gardens, NW6. Constance Marsden has her own entry at that address, and also one at her West End business address: “Constance B. Marsden, At-home Photographer”, 67 George Street, Portman Square, W1.
1933 Wilfrid Humphrey Marsden (only son of Algernon and Louise) makes a two-month visit to London from Canada (Quebec to Southampton) with his wife Dorothy and their daughter Fleur Sybil, aged 3 or 4. Wilfrid is now an Attorney aged 47; his temporary address in the UK is Canfield Gardens NW6, close to his sisters. (In 1939 Wilfrid’s sister Sybil Marsden, aged 66, would make a one-month visit to Canada, presumably to visit Wilfrid and family; Sybil’s ship arrived back in England on 2 September 1939, the day before the start of war with Germany. Sybil died in 1946. In 1956 Fleur Sybil Marsden, by then a teacher aged 26, visited London.)
1934 Stephen Leopold (son born 1858) now lives at 71 Clarence Gate Gardens, near Regents Park, London. His son Gerald Stephen Maurice Marsden marries Deirdre V. Montagu; they will have two sons, Anthony Gerald (born 1936, now living in West Sussex) and Michael Stephen (1939-2014).
1936 Herbert Philip (son born 1848) dies. Buried at Willesden. After the death of his wife Hetty in 1932 Herbert moved from his long-standing address, 6 Randolph Crescent, Maida Vale, and by 1934 he was living at 86 Rodney Court, Maida Vale, with his son Cedric Herbert (born 1908) who in 1933 was admitted as a member of the London Stock Exchange. Rodney Court is the block of flats where I would live with my parents and grandmother from 1948-9.
Herbert Philip Marsden
1938 Douglas Herbert, 40-year-old son of Herbert Philip and Hetty Marsden, who emigrated in Australia in 1923, marries Nora Phillips. They will have two children, John and Caroline.
1939 Rodolph Isaac (son born 1853) dies. On 21st March 1936 he and and his wife Edith Grace had celebrated their diamond wedding anniversary. The phone directory for 1934 lists Rodolph at 1 Pembroke Mansions, 16 Canfield Gardens, Hampstead.
1939 The electoral roll for Grove Hall Court, Hall Road, London NW8, lists Ida Frances Rosenthal (Isaac’s daughter born 1868) and her children John David (aged 29), May Esther (28), and Beatrice Florence (25). So some time after the death of her husband Lionel Henry Rosenthal in 1932, Ida had moved back to London from Dublin. (A ship’s manifest of October 1933 records Beatrice, then a student aged 19, living at 9 Pembridge Square, London, W2.)
1940 One of the daughters of Algernon and Louise, Olga Florelle Geraldine (born 1882 so aged 57) marries Raphael Saunders.
1940 May Esther Rosenthal, elder daughter of Ida Frances, marries James Lennox in Marylebone, London. Lennox is also from Ireland and had studied in Dublin; he is a Christian who in 1938 had been ordained as a Minister in the Church of England. May becomes the vicar’s wife in James Lennox’s parish in County Durham, north-east England. May’s sister Beatrice Florence, while visiting the Lennoxes, would meet Captain Kenneth Walker Clayton of the Royal Engineers, son of Major and Mrs Joshua Clayton of Barnard Castle, County Durham. A notice in the Jewish Chronicle records their marriage in February 1946, in Bihar Province, Northern India. (Though her name is recorded as “Naomi Rosenthal” it must be Beatrice as she is described as “youngest daughter of the late Lionel H. Rosenthal, K.C. Dublin and Mrs L.H. Rosenthal of Pembridge Gardens, London W2”.)
1940 Stephen Leopold (son born 1858) dies in London. Buried at Willesden.
1940 My parents Nora and George marry in London. As well as Nora’s grandmother Adela, other Marsden relatives are invited to the wedding: Isabel Blanche Finzi and her daughter, the artist Eva Finzi; Ida Frances Rosenthal and her daughters May Esther and Beatrice Florence; Beatrice Helen Marsden; Edith Marsden, widow of Rodolph Isaac; Winifred Claire Costello, daughter of Herbert Philip and Hetty Marsden; and three daughters of Algernon, the ‘Misses Marsden’ Hilda, Sybil, and Constance, who are all living at 27 Lyncroft Gardens, Hampstead.
1941 My great-grandmother Adela (daughter born 1856) dies. Buried at Willesden.
1944 Leonard Levison Montagu Marsden, son of Montague Marsden and his wife Flora, dies in Hampstead aged 79. The 1934 phone directory, compiled when he was 69, lists his office in the City as well as his home address, 42 Belsize Park.
1945 Isabel Blanche (daughter born 1861) dies. Her grave is in Hoop Lane, Golders Green, with her husband Daniel Finzi who had died in 1906. My mother Nora had this to say about Isabel:
She was very nice, Aunt Isabel, and she was a lovely lady, very charitable, and when I was younger I used to like to collect for charity, I still do now when I can, but back then, when I was still at school, if we had Dr Barnardo’s or something we were collecting for, and you always knew, some people, you got frightened of asking them because you knew you would get a snub or something like that, but with Aunt Isabel, she would always give something for charity, but there was always a proviso - anonymous. I’ve always remembered that, and I’ve always thought, that is real giving, because some people like to give and then they like to put their name, isn’t that good, you know, so-and-so, look how generous they were, they gave, but Aunt Isabel would only give on that condition, that it was anonymous, and I think that is true giving. That was very very good.
1945 Edith Grace, widow of Rodolph Isaac, dies. Buried at Willesden.
1946 Billy Arbib, son of Dora and grandson of Algernon, marries Rosi Kohn. The Kohn family had lived in Germany and Poland; Rosi was sent to Palestine in 1938 aged 16, her father escaped to England but otherwise the entire family was killed in the holocaust. The wedding of Billy and Rosi takes place in the home of Ada and Alice Hyam in Tel-Aviv: sisters of independent means living in Palestine since World War I, they were daughters of Hyman Hyam and grand-daughters of Lawrence Hyam (brother of Isaac’s first wife Rachel, and father of Louise Hyam who married Algernon). Caroline, the elder sister of Ada and Alice Hyam - known after marriage as Carrie Van der Wielen - also lived in Tel-Aviv and died there in 1941. Ada died in 1960. (Information from Ruth Arbib Murphy.)
Dora Marsden Arbib; 1946 wedding of Billy Arbib to Rosi Kohn, with Ada and Alice Hyam.
(When Nora’s sister Ruth met my father, George Seymour, in 1939 she thought that George “looks a bit like that cousin of ours, Billy Arbib.”)
Billy Arbib and and Rosi Kohn had met in Palestine in 1943 when Billy was on Army leave, having just survived the sinking of Erinpura troop carrier by the Germans: Billy was an officer in the British army commanding Hebrew volunteers. After their marriage in 1946 Billy and Rosi lived in London until 1949 when they emigrated to Palestine. Billy Arbib died in 1981 aged 69, Rosi in 2013 aged 92 (information from their daughter Ruth Arbib Murphy.)
Billy Arbib’s younger brother John Reginald emigrated to Australia via New Zealand after the war; in 2003 he died in Sydney, where his daughter Jenny Smith still lives.
George Marsden (Levy), older son of Algernon’s daughter Madeline, emigrated to Canada; in this picture he is with his wife Penelope and son Nicholas.
1947 Gerald Stephen Maurice Marsden, son of Stephen Leopold (Isaac’s son 1858 - 1940), dies aged 38.
1951 Dora Marsden Arbib, daughter of Algernon, dies.
1953 The last two of Isaac’s Marsden’s daughters die, both being buried at Willesden. Beatrice Helen (born 1865) dies in Hove, and Ida Frances Rosenthal (born 1868) in a nursing home in Harrogate, Yorkshire. Ida Francis had presumably moved North to live near her elder daughter May Esther, whose address from 1947 to 1963 was Woodhouse Vicarage, Huddersfield, Yorkshire: this is listed on the 1957 probate of May’s brother John David Rosenthal, who died aged 47. John David’s death notice in the Jewish Chronicle gives the name of his younger sister as “Beatrice Muller, Johannesburg”, so she was no longer the wife of Captain Clayton. May Esther Lennox remained in Yorkshire until her death in Bradford in 1999. When James Lennox died in 2010, aged 97, he was the subject of an obituary in the Yorkshire Post.
1953 Under the provisions of Isaac’s 1884 will, the deaths of the last of his children invoke the winding up of his estate, and the accounts are drawn up in 1955 in a 48-page document “Residuary Fund of Beatrice Helen Marsden 1953” prepared by the firm Tamplin Joseph & Flux, 122 Minories, London EC3. The total amount is £18,038, “by balance divisible between the remaining 13 children of the late I.M. Marsden or their descendants and carried to individual beneficiaries’ accounts”.
The 13 Beneficiaries of the Residuary Fund.
Isaac had five children from his first marriage with Rachel Hyam, of whom Rachel (born 1836) died in childhood. Julia (born 1829) and Kate (born 1831) are not included in the Residuary Fund, only the two sons.
Maurice Isaac Marsden (1832 - 1912). The Trustees of Maurice I. Marsden, decd.
Montague Montagu Marsden (1833 - 1899). The Trustees of Montague M. Marsden, decd.
Isaac had 14 children from his second marriage with Esther Gomes Silva, of whom Angelina Florence (born 1849) and Sybila Augusta (born 1855) died in childhood, and Beatrice Helen (1865 - 1953) was unmarried.
Madeline (1846 - 1880): See Marsdens in France. The Family of Mme. M. Fallek, decd.
- The Administrator of Mme. Hermine Esther Isidor, decd.
- The Administrator of Ernest Abraham Fallek, decd.
- The Administrator of Mme. Hélène L. Guastalla, decd.
- The Administrator of Mme. E. R. (Clotilde) Brunschwig, decd.
- The Administrator of Mme. Eugenie A. Kahn, decd.
- The Administrator of Alphonse Hirsch Fallek, decd.
Algernon (1847 - 1920): The Family of Algernon M. Marsden, decd.
- The Executrices of Miss Sybil Louise Frances Marsden, decd. (1873 - 1946): her sisters Constance and Hilda.
- Miss Hilda Ethel Marsden (1874 - 1964). Hilda’s probate was £32,725; one of her executors, Richard Reuben Arbib, Company Director, was her nephew (son of her sister Dora), the other was Elizabeth Annette Lee (daughter of her sister Effie Solomon).
- The Administratrices of Miss Muriel Alice Marsden, decd. (1875 - 1922): her sister Sybil.
- The Executor of Mrs. Dora Helen Edith Arbib, decd. (1876 - 1951).
- The Trustees of the Marriage Settlement of Mrs. Effie Josephine Gwendoline Solomon. (1880 - 1971)
- Mrs. Olga Florelle Geraldine Saunders (1882 - 1963)
- Mrs. Madeline Joan Adela Levy (1884 - 1966).
- Wilfrid Humphrey Algernon Marsden, Esq. (1885 - ?). Emigrated to Canada. In 1957 he was living in Toronto, Ontario.
- Legal Personal Representative of Miss Mildred Isabel Florence Marsden, decd. (1887 - 1914)
- Miss Constance Barbara Sylvia Marsden. (1889 - 1972)
Herbert Philip (1848 - 1936): The Trustees of Herbert P. Marsden, decd
Edith Josephine (1850 - 1923): See Marsdens in France. The Family of Mme E.J. Ettinghausen, decd.
- Legal Personal Representative of M. Herbert Ettinghausen, decd.
- The Administrator of Mmme. Emma Rose Hamburger and the Administrator of M. David Hamburger, jointly.
- The Administrator of Mme. Hélène C. Meyer, decd.
- The Administrator of Mme. Beatrice Hamburger, decd.
- Mademoiselle Alice N. Ettinghausen.
Georgina Hester (1851 - ?): See Marsdens in France. The Family of G. H. Lang, decd.
- Madame Mathilde Aron.
- The Administrator of Mme. Rose Josué, decd.
- Monsieur Henri Lang.
Constance Rebecca (1852 - 1889): See Marsdens in France. The Family of C. R. Kiefe, decd.
- The Administrator of Félix Kiefe, decd.
- M. Edmond Kiefe.
- The Administrator of Victor Kiefe, decd.
- The Administrator of Oscar Kiefe, decd.
- Mme. Marguerite Michel-Lévy and M. Albert Michel-Lévy.
- Mme. Pauline Lévy.
Rodolph Isaac (1853 - 1939): The Share of Rodolph Marsden, decd.
Adela Louise (1856 - 1941): The Family of Mrs A. L. Schwarzschild, decd. See Adela Marsden.
- Albert I. Schwarzschild, Esq.
- Percy H. Schwarzschild, Esq.
- Mrs. Evelina A. Mayer.
- Miss Constance M. Schwarzschild.
Stephen Leopold (1858 - 1940): The Trustees of Stephen L. Marsden, decd.
Isabel Blanche (1861 - 1945): The Family of Mrs I. B. Finzi, decd.
- Albert I. Schwarzschild and Eric J. Finzi as Trustees for Miss Eva Finzi.
- Eric J. Finzi, Esq.
Ida Frances (1868 - 1953): The Estate of Mrs I. F. Rosenthal, decd.
Three of Algernon’s daughters, Constance, Madeline and Effie, possibly in early 1960s.
Thanks to Hugh Marsden, Celia Marsden Josephs, and Ruth Arbib Murphy for photographs.
Page last updated 5 Jul 2024.