| The Van Praagh Family
Story... 1700 - 1998 Chapter 3 THE VAN PRAAGH STORY 1816 to 1990 IN HOLLAND, ENGLAND AND AROUND THE WORLD |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Benjamin Moses Van Praagh arrived in London
in 1816 with his wife Bartje Joseph Speyer and their four sons, Lemmel, Joseph, Moses and
Saloman. Soon afterwards, their fifth son, Lewis was born, most likely in 1818. They probably joined Benjamin Wolf Van Praagh, whose
sixth child Moses Wolf, was born about this time to his wife Sarah Reys in 1816. The Dutch Van
Praaghs Within a few years, Benjamin Wolf and his family returned
to Holland, which they had left in 1810 during the Napoleonic Wars. They settled in
Rotterdam. Moses Wolf, Selma's great grandfather, moved to Naaldwijk, near the Hague, and
Selma grew up there. The family were to be described by a Dutch author writing about them
as 'a most outstanding Naaldwijkse family' (JG de Ridder, 1979). A grandson of Benjamin Wolf, Wolf Saloman, was to marry in
1872 Emily, daughter of Morris and grandson of Benjamin Moses. Wolf Saloman worked and studied at the Institute in
Rotterdam where they taught the deaf by employing the (German) Strict oral approach in
which only speech was used with, and accepted from, pupils. The use of signs was
absolutely forbidden. This contrasted with the method employed by Paris at that time,
where instruction was given by sign. The first school in Great Britain for the deaf was
started in Edinburgh in 1760 and used something of and intermediated method between the
German and the French methods, using a combination of speech and signs. Wolf Saloman was invited to England to run the school for
deaf children set up by the Association for the Oral Instruction of the Dumb, founded in
1870. Wolf was naturalised a British citizen and took the name William. When he died of a
heart attack in 1907, he was widely respected for his work with the deaf, using the oral
method. Gordon (who is Visiting Professor of Science at the
University, Malaysia) and Dame Peggy (who founded the Australia Ballet Company) are his
grandchildren. Two of the grandchildren of Moses Wolf, Esther and Isaac
(cousins) married in 1904. The youngest of their children is Selma (born 1921). The three
older daughters (Mietje, Marianne and Catharina) died in 1942, together with their
children, in the Nazi death camps. The elder son, Thonie was in the Dutch Resistance and
did not come back from a mission. He was capture by the Germans. The younger son,
Siegfried was married to a non-Jew and was able to hide for part of the time, did farm
work etc. He lived until 1970 and had five children, one born during the war. Of the
parents, Isaac died in 1938, while Esther died in Sobibor death camp in 1942. Selma
survived, doing nursing, farm work, domestic work etc. To Selma, Holland was a graveyard at the end of the war and
after two years nursing in Indonesia, she went to Israel to nurse. There she met her
husband, Antheunis Jacobs, and had two children by him, Miriam and Stephen. Antheunis (who
died in 1977) was descended from an old established Dutch family. The English Van
Praaghs Benjamin Moses died in 1824, at the age of 43. He and his
wife Bartje (who took the name Elizabeth) are buried in Lauriston Road Jewish Cemetery,
which has been closed for a long time. Elizabeth lived to the age of 68 and died in 1851
in the house of her youngest son, Lewis, at 10 Widegate Street in Bishopsgate. On her
death certificate, Benjamin Moses is described as a 'curiosity dealer', but then Lewis
would hardly have known his father, who may have been a jeweller and antique dealer. The
Van Praagh family in Groningen were quite well off, and Bartje was given a substantial
dowry. Presumably, Benjamin thought there were better opportunities for him and his sons
in London than in Holland: London was at the beginning of the enormous expansion which
took place during the 19th century, when it became the largest city in the
world, and one of the most unhealthy. On Benjamin Moses tombstone he is called Abraham Benjamin
Moses. Th Abraham is added to deceive the evil spirits who want to carry off the souls of
the departed: this is a superstition which goes back tot he ancient Egyptions. It confused
us for some time since we thought that was really his name. The Descendants of
Moses (Morris), third son of Benjamin Moses Morris had 10 children, nearly all of whom married and had
children. Two are significant in this story, namely Jacob (called Jacques) and Emily, the
youngest. John is the grandson of Jacob, and Gordon and Dame Peggy are the grandchildren
of Emily and William Van Praagh. Apart from these two, all the descendants of Emily are in
Canada (then to the USA and New Zealand. Two notable ones are Dr Peter in New Zealand and his wife
Jeanne, who have five sons, and Dr Richard and his wife Stella in the USA. Dr's Richard
and Stella are internationally famous for their work on congenital heart malformations.
They have three children. Brother Dr Ian, has three children. The sixth child of Jacob Jacques by his wife Rebecca Levy,
was Arthur John. John is the son of Arthur and his third wife, Hyacinth Wellesley Frizell
( his first two wives died without children). John and his wife Barbara have a son
Richard, born in 1965. John has a sister, Diamond, who lives in Switzerland. The Descendants of
Lewis, fifth son of Benjamin Moses The eldest child, Benjamin, married Anna Green and had
three daughters by her. His second wife was Julia Mandelstam and she lived till 1947, aged
88. The third child, Aaron, married Miriam (Marie) Lackenbach,
and had five children by her, including two pairs of twins. The story of Aaron in South
Africa is told in Chapter 4. The sixth child, Elizabeth, married an immigrant from
Lithuania, Lewis Brown, who settled in Newcastle, where there was a substantial Jewish
community from eastern Europe. He came from Wystiniec on the border with east Prussia and
was educated in a German school although his village was occupied by Russia. His father
was a leading member of the Jewish community and was a very religious man. They had six
children. In 1860, Elizabeth's mother, Lewis' first wife, died of
typhoid and after a year he married Balia Turckheim from Holland. Balia and her father and
sister all settled in Lewis house. Benjamin and Aaron stayed in Whitechapel while Lewis
and his family moved to a fresh home in White Lion Street, Tower Hamlets and later to Mile
End Road, Tower Hamlets, the a prosperous area. Balia (Bella) had a son, Morris, in 1862 another son,
Joseph, in 1864 and a third son Lawrence in 1867. Lewis and Bella adopted two children in
these years: Jane (later called Jeanette)born 1864 and Nathaniel born 1866. Four children from the first marriage remained in Lewis new
home: Elizabeth, Isaac, Soloman and Fanny. Fanny died of smallpox in 1871. Isaac married
in 1876. Soloman went to South Africa. Elizabeth was the last left from the first marriage
and she married Lewis Brown in 1879. Of Lewis Van Praagh and Bella's family, Morris went to
South Africa, probably in the 1880s. Some thirty years later he returned to England and
married Hilda Muriel Swinden and they had two daughters who went to the USA. Jeanette married Abraham Brown and had five children and
they all went to South Africa probably around the year 1906. Nathaniel was recorded in the 1871
and 1881 population census and nothing is known of him after that. Perhaps he also went to
South Africa and maybe died there at a young age.
Lammert was an umbrella maker but in his 1871 census return
he described himself as a retired jeweller. He was then living with his son-in-law,
Maurice Spiegel. Joseph described himself as a jeweller, then as a general
dealer. In 1871 he was living with his son Barnett and his family. His wife Maria was dead
and he was blind. (In those days, so many people went blind so young, before modern
methods of treatment were available, as shown by census returns.) Morris described himself as a jeweller and later as a diamond merchant. In 1871 he was simply a gentleman. He became President of the Hambro Synagogue in 1852 until his death. In his photographs he looks an imposing Victorian gentleman. Lewis first describes himself as a jeweller and then as an
ironmonger. On his death certificate (1890) he is described as a bill discounter so he may
have become a City gent. Many City gents lived in Elgin Avenue in those days: that area
had become a district of large fine houses. It is notable that all the brothers remained in Whitechapel
until they reached middle age, when they seem to have blossomed in the age of Victorian
prosperity. They must have been very poor in their early years after their father died (in
1824) and to have had to struggle to make good, when England was still in the early stages
of the Industrial Revolution and great poverty was widespread. They probably lived in
dreadful housing conditions in Whitechapel. Typhoid, cholera and smallpox were endemic.
Death in childbirth was common and it is remarkable that none of the wives died in this
way. Not until the 1850's and 1860's did the Government take extensive action to improve
health conditions, by improving water suppliers and drainage. Of Lewis first family, with Elizabeth Symons, the second
child Esther died of measles and pneumonia at the age of two, the fourth child Joseph died
of Cholera at the age of seven, the fifth child Amelia died within a few months of birth,
and the eight child Fanny died of smallpox at the age of 14. Elizabeth herself died of
typhoid at the age of 44. (One of Lewis elder brothers Soloman died of consumption (TB) at
the age of 33.) Brothers Lemmel, Joseph and Moses did not suffer such misfortunes in their
families. Perhaps Lewis' misfortunes were partly due to poverty in his early years (he was
much younger than the other brothers). His wife Elizabeth lived in Harrow Alley before she married
him. This must have been a dreadful place, lined on one side by slaughterhouses and on the
other side by dwellings packed full of people, some of them slaughtermen, others poor
Jewish families and Irish families. A later photograph of her, aged about 40, shows her as
a fine looking woman with a strong face.
CHILDREN OF LEMMEL (LAMBERT,
LAMMERT) AND SAARTJE (SARAH)
|