Evelina Schwarzschild
My maternal grandmother Evelina Adela Scharzschild (1883 - 1959) was the eldest of four children of stockbroker Jacob Scharzschild and Adela Marsden, daughter of Isaac Moses Marsden.
Evelina with baby and her mother Adela Schwarzschild
Nora gave an account of Evelina’s disability:
… she had one leg shorter than the other, and they used to tell her, my grandmother used to tell her, that the nurse had dropped her. The house where they lived, I don’t know if you know that area, near Notting Hill Gate, but the houses have got lots of steps up, and she was told, that when she was a baby, the nanny had dropped her on the stairs and she had broken her leg. This is only what we were told, but when she was older, they suggested operating, but of course in those days operating theatres were all very new and everything, and they wouldn’t, my grandfather wouldn’t agree to having an operation. I believe for several years she didn’t walk at all, I’ve seen photos of it, she was almost like in a pram, a sort of flat thing, like a bed I suppose, but once she was about 8 or 9, she had to learn to walk. Then she had to have special shoes, she always had to have special shoes made, because one leg was shorter than the other, so she had this built-up shoe you see. Years after, when we were adults, she went to a very good specialist, and he said it wasn’t true that she’d been dropped. In his opinion, she was born like that. If it was nowadays and you were born with one leg shorter than the other, you probably could have some kind of operation. Maybe that’s why her father spoiled her so, maybe he felt responsible. If a child was born with a deformity, you never know how you’d feel, you might feel responsible. It could have been that. I know that he did adore her, he used to buy her hats and things, but in many ways he adored her.
In 1912 Evelina married Alfred Mayer and they had four children: Ruth Kate (1913 - 2013), my mother Nora Adela (1914 - 2002), Henry Alfred (1918 - 2004), and Joyce Constance (1921 - 2002).
1921: left to right - Henry, Ruth, Joyce, Evelina, and Nora. Mid-1920s: left to right - Nora, Henry, Joyce, and Ruth.
All four children were given middle names from members of their family: Katchen (Kate) Mayer, Adela Schwarzschild, Alfred Mayer, and Constance Schwarzschild. Generally quite a nice custom, but unfortunate in the case of Henry Alfred Mayer whose schoolmates noticed that he was a Jewish boy with initials HAM.
Late 1928: left to right - Nora (13), Joyce (7), Adela, Henry (10), Jacob, and Ruth (14). On the beach at Margate, 1929: left to right - Henry (11), Ruth (15), unknown, Joyce (8) and Nora (14)
Evelina suffered two significant bereavements within six years. In 1929 her father Jacob Schwarzschild died suddenly; then in 1935 her husband Alfred Mayer died, also quite suddenly from angina at the age of 62. Nora said that after Alfred’s death “… we stayed in the house first, and then, you see, I think I told you, it wasn’t her house, it was rented, which was a great mistake. So she had no capital there, but what she did - I can’t remember how long after - my brother was taken out of school, I think I told you, but she went to live, and we all had to go with her, to a hotel in Bayswater. I can’t remember the name of it. Ruth and I had to pay our own, so we cost my mother nothing, we had to pay our own fares and clothes and everything.” In 1939 Evelina appears on the voters list at 44 Lancaster Gate, London. But after the outbreak of war she decided to move to Worthing, on the Sussex coast.
In 1940 Nora, my mother, married George Seymour.
On 23rd December 1951 Ruth Mayer, aged 38, married Edward George (Ted) Fischeles, aged 42. Ted had been born in 1909 in Odessa, the Russian Empire, and lived with his mother Mina, who was born in Russia in 1880. After the marriage Ruth, Ted and Mina lived in the same house in London. Ted was a naturalised British subject and had served in the Royal Air Force, qualifying as an Aeronautical Technician in 1938 at Yapton Aero Club in Sussex.
Ruth with pageboys Anthony (aged 6, left) and David (aged 8, right). Ted’s 1938 RAF certificate.
On 3rd June 1952 Henry Mayer married June Miriam Seligmann (born 1927 in Salford, Lancashire) and I was again a pageboy.
The pagegirl was Elizabeth Lisbona, daughter of one of June’s many cousins. The Lisbona family were prominent for many years in the small Sephardic Jewish community in Syria; many migrated from Syria when the opening of the Suez canal in 1869 affected the commercial significance of Damascus and Aleppo.
At the back of the picture on the right is June’s father Leopold Benjamin Seligmann (1890-1957). Born in Manchester, he founded a glass company which relocated to Hatton Garden in London in 1938, when June was aged 10. After his death in 1957 Uncle Henry took over the business.
The woman beside June’s father is Isobel Harris, daughter of June’s aunt Lily Seligmann and her husband Maurice Goldstone. Isobel’s brother Ronnie Goldstone (1908-1995) was the father of the film producer John Goldstone. In 1979, just before filming was scheduled to begin on ‘Monty Python’s Life of Brian’
EMI had pulled out because apparently [film executive] Lord Bernie Delfont had finally got around to reading the script, decided it was blasphemous, and didn’t want his company to be involved in it … Everything was cancelled…. Enter George Harrison, Python fanatic and close friend of Eric Idle. Idle and producer John Goldstone went to see Harrison at his home in the Hollywood Hills and the former Beatles man promised to pay for the whole thing. “I can’t remember whether he’d read the script already or not,” Goldstone told The Guardian in 2003. “It didn’t really seem to matter. I just couldn’t believe it. I felt… rock’n’rollers, no sense of reality at all.”
John Goldstone was not the only person in this story who was what Brian in the film called a “Red Sea Pedestrian”. Winogradsky was the family name of Lord Bernie (Boris) Grade of Delfont and his brothers Lew (Baron Grade of Elstree) and Leslie (father of Michael, Baron Grade of Yarmouth).
Henry and June had three children: Keith Edouard Alfred (born 1954), Suzanne Ruth Leonora (1957), and Philip Leopold (1961).
In 1955 Evelina’s youngest daughter Joyce Mayer, aged 34, married Leslie Jackson, aged 49, at a Hampstead Registry Office. I remember the wedding celebrant commenting on Evelina’s tears during the wedding, but he misunderstood their meaning - these were not the customary tears of joy. Not only had Leslie’s mother Florence Turner worked as a Ladies Maid for Evelina’s parents, but the Jacksons were Christians and Joyce had converted to Christianity. Leslie ran Jacksons Garden Centre in Great Baddow, near Chelmsford, Essex, and lived in the same street his whole life. The marriage was a happy one, lasting 40 years until Leslie’s death in 1995 aged 89. Their adopted daughter Joan married and lived locally with her husband and two daughters.
For much of her later life, Evelina was crippled by arthritis and used an invalid carriage as her mode of transport; in this picture she is with her grandson Keith Mayer.
When she died In 1959, aged 76, Evelina was living at The Royal Hospital for Incurables in Putney, London, known since 1995 as the Royal Hospital for Neuro-Disability. Buried at Willesden.
In 1964 Ruth’s husband Ted Fischeles died, aged 55. Ted’s mother Mina lived to the age of 96, dying in 1976.
In 1971 Ruth got engaged to be married to Hyman (Hymie) Taper, a self-employed tailor born on 15th April 1914 in Soho, London. But there was a problem. The Rabbi of their Orthodox synagogue told them that they were bound by the rules of Levirate Marriage and Halitzah: Ruth, being a childless widow, must first attempt a Levirate marriage to a brother of her late husband Ted, so that she would have the opportunity to bear a child bearing the Fischeles name. Note: Ruth was then aged 58! As an alternative to Levirate marriage the ritual of Halitzah (“taking off the shoe”) must be performed. Ruth, the childless widow, must take off her brother-in-law’s shoe and then spit on the ground in front of him (indicating contempt), declaring that “thus shall be done to the man who will not build up his brother’s house” (Deuteronomy 25:9). From then on, the widow was free to marry anyone she chose.
Instead, Ruth and Hymie left the Orthodox synagogue to which they had belonged all their lives and married in another one which was somewhat less Orthodox.
Hymie was very much loved by everyone in my family, and Ruth had 12 happy years in their house in Shepherds Bush, West London. But sadly Hymie died suddenly in 1983, aged 69.
1980s: left to right - Joyce, Ruth, Henry, and Nora.
Nora and Joyce both died in 2002, and Henry in 2004.
Keith Mayer married Zinka Zuzek. On 20 September 2002 their daughter Nicola was born, and they visited Nora on her 88th birthday on 2 December. In 2014 Zinka, Nicola and Keith visited the picture of Isaac Moses Marsden at Lords.
Ruth Taper, the eldest of the four children of Alfred Mayer and Evelina Schwarzschild, lived till 2013 when she was 99. The picture on the left shows Ruth with Keith Mayer (her nephew, my cousin) in February 2013, shortly before her death on 10th March. The picture on the right was taken at Ruth’s 95th birthday party, September 2008.
Ruth was buried in Bushey Cemetery beside her first husband Ted.
In November 2020 Nicola and Keith (and dog) visited the bench in Holland Park dedicated to Hymie Taper.
On 24th June 2024 June Seligmann, widow of Henry Mayer, died on her 97th birthday after a long illness. Auntie June was the last of my parents’ generation.
Special thanks to Keith Mayer for information and photos.
Page last updated 12 Nov 2024.