The Legendary Bennisters

In January 2024 I wrote an annual review to this blog to take stock about my activities. I wrote about how researching, using popular research archives, can throw up surprising and exciting avenues which, although connected in some way to the families that I write about, are not directly family members.

I mentioned that I had discovered a young member of the Bennister family lodging with my Great Grandparents in Offord D’Arcy, a village in Cambridgeshire, previously Huntingdonshire. I said, “One Census return can offer a small amount of information that generates an enormous, but no less important, distraction.”

So, this week’s posting is an important distraction.

My Great Grandparents, who like many of my generation, I never met, were never spoken of fondly by my mother, Grace Carver. Her Grandparents, Cornelius and Susan Walker were regarded by her as stern Victorian people. On one occasion when she was staying with them, she had been told never to touch a camera that sat on a shelf, owned by a cousin or an uncle. Grace was not yet 10 and her curiosity was a natural urge for a child that young. She touched the camera, she was found out, she was sent back home to Acton in London earlier than expected.

The Walkers had frequent visitors. It was the 1921 Census return that fascinated me.

1921 Census return for Cornelius Walker, my great grandfather, in Offord D’arcy (National Archives via Ancestry.co.uk))

It is not a great scanned image so I thought I would detail the relevant information.

Name	Position in House	Where Born	Occupation
Cornelius James Walker 62	Head	Croydon	Independent Means
Susan Walker 65	Wife	London	Domestic Duties
Henry Leonard Bennister 7	Boarder	Haverstock Hill	Scholar, whole time
Renee A Wilcox 2	Visitor	Acton, London
George Whitehead 17	Visitor	Acton, London	Clerk, Eastman Ltd, meat purveyors

I can find no connection for George with any other family member that I have researched within the Walker family. He was born in Acton, a place familiar with Grace Wilcox, my grandmother, and her husband. At 17, George was a clerk with a company called Eastman Ltd., described in the return as ‘meat purveyors’. A quick search for that company advises me that in 1921 there was a popular chain of butchers called Eastman, and they had shops across the United Kingdom. They were an American company specialising in frozen meat.

Why George was visiting my Great Grandparents and what his connection with them is unknown. Cornelius was living by Independent Means for a lot of his adult life. Was there a business connection? Perhaps not. Every butcher’s shop would have had a clerk. They would usually sit in a separate booth where they would receive payment from the customers.

Next up is Renee Wilcox. I think Cornelius was writing her name with a double E because he thought it was spelt like it sounded. This was my Aunt Rene, aged 2, second daughter of Grace Wilcox, my mother’s younger sister. Rene was born in 1919, and I can’t help but think she was slightly young to have travelled all the way from Acton in London with her mother to be left with the Walkers for a spell of time. There was a railway station at Offord D’Arcy served by the Great Northern Railway from King’s Cross in London. It was a 56-mile journey, and I guess it was a 90-minute journey in the steam days.

Next is this week’s subject.

Henry Leonard Bennister was always known in my family as Len Bennister. If I met him, I have no memory. My grandmother, Grace Wilcox, spoke about him, his brother, and his family frequently. They were particularly important friends of hers during her life. Her connections with Len’s mother were strong and one of the ties of this relation was a painting that she gifted to Grace Wilcox. From my memory it was a simple street market scene with two women, who were stereotypical Eastern Europeans, almost definitely Jewish. My parents had a copy made and I remember it on my mother’s wall but have no idea where it went to after she died.

Len Bennister was born in 1914. Here is a brief background to his family from Ancestry records.

Len was the grandson of Abraham Bernstein who was born in Russia in 1866, as was his grandmother. The Census enumerator of 1901 had many people from Russia living nearby the Bernsteins in Popes Head Court, Quaker Street located in Spitalfields, East London. After listing their country of birth, in brackets, was the word ‘foreigner’. It doesn’t need too much research to realise that the Bernsteins were part of the massive migration forced upon them and their fellow Jewish victims of the Russian pogroms –

A pogrom is a violent riot incited with the aim of massacring or expelling an ethnic or religious group, usually applied to attacks on Jews. The term entered the English language from Russian to describe late 19th- and early 20th-century attacks on Jews in the Russian Empire.

Particularly from 1881 onwards there were decades of pogroms against Eastern European Jews starting in Russia and then spreading to Poland and Germany, culminating in the Holocaust of the Second World War. Abraham Bernstein and his family were one of many thousands of immigrants seeking asylum. There were two routes that were used to escape to the West. One was across the North Sea to Hull on the east coast of England where, because of so many people arriving, special facilities to secure the fleeing migrants beside the railway station platform were hastily created. Trains were then taking the migrants across the country to the Liverpool docks where they were embarking for New York. The other destination was London where many settled in the East End of London.

There was hostility to the Jewish immigrants in East London and a lot of political agitation against them. Consequently, there was a need to suppress their identity by assimilating and name changing. The Bernstein’s eventually became Berenstein’s and then Bennister’s.

Len’s father was Arthur Aaron Bennister, he like his older brother Barnett, were both born in Russia, but they had younger siblings born in Stepney. I looked further into the 1901 Census return for Popes Head Court and discovered that there were 18 properties in the small court, apartments or tenements, with over 100 people living in them. That would be 18 large families living in properties that had less than five rooms in each.

I found a Spitalfields blog that had an image from the notebook of Charles Booth from 1898 that sketched out a walk he had taken around Quaker Street and Pope’s Head Court. It was part of his research for the book Survey into the Life and Labour of the People of London. The image was found on Spitalfields Life.

Image of a page from Charles Booth’s notebook in which he has sketched the location of Quaker Street and Pope’s Head Court. (image copied from www.spitalfieldslife.com)

Ten years later and I discover a more detailed Census return which now outlines the origins of Len’s family beginning. His parents before marriage and his Grandparents.

1911 Census return for the Bernstein family (via Ancestry.co.uk)

The Bernstein’s have yet to change their name, possibly by Deed Poll, but it would not have been illegal to change a name or spelling of a name as long as it was not for fraudulent purposes.. They were also still, after ten years, living in Popes Head Court. The Census return, completed and signed by Abraham Bernstein, shows that they are living in an apartment of only two rooms, including the kitchen. There were eight people aged from 12 to 46 living here.

Name	Age	Role	Occupation	Where Born
Abraham Bernstein	46	Head	Tailor	Minsk, Russia
Annie Bernstein	44	Wife		Rakov, Russia
Barnett Bernstein	23	Son	Tailor	Rakov, Russia
Aaron Bernstein B.Sc	21	Son	Student Teacher (in training) LCC	Rakov, Russia
Sarah Bernstein	17	Daughter	Tailoress	Spitalfield, London
Louis Bernstein	14	Son	Tailor	Whitechapel, London
Alexander Bernstein	12	Son	Scholar	Spitalfield, London
Cissie Seigel	18	Niece	Dressmaker	Rakov, Russia

Rakov is or was a village in Belarus, and Minsk was the country’s capital city. This was a significant geographical area of the anti Jewish pogroms from 1881 onwards into the 20^th Century.

The Bernsteins were a hard working family of tailors, not working for themselves but other companies. Arthur (Aaron) is not pursuing the trade because, as his title tells us after his name, he has a university degree and is a Bachelor of Science, training to be a teacher at the age of 21.

If Arthur’s younger sister Sarah was born in London, then the Bernstein’s had been living in London since at least 1893.

Cissie had arrived from Rakov as well, she was the niece of Abraham and Annie and soon to be come Arthur’s wife.

Here we have Mr. and Mrs. Bennister, who would have four children and live a productive life with well-educated children and a successful contribution to British life, as did their parents and siblings.

So, how did my grandmother Grace Wilcox meet Arthur and Cissie and what connected them and caused them to become good friends? This, I cannot discover.

The Bennisters lived in Farleigh Road in Hackney after they married and  Arthur had qualified as a School Teacher. He worked in Old Castle Street School in Whitechapel. They then moved to Wandsworth at 3 Englewood Road which is on the edge of Clapham Common. The 1939 Register tells us that Len has become an Industrial Chemist (Research and Development) while his younger sister Beatrice was a qualified School Teacher in Ilford. There is a London Underground station around the corner from Englewood Road, and I imagine Beatrice taking the tube to work in Ilford. Not a short journey. Frank was a mechanic (of what, I cannot make out in the register).

This being a wartime register it is also noted that Len is a member of the ARP (Air Raid Wardens) and is described as a Gas Investigation Officer.

I cannot help but notice that living next door to the Bennisters in Englewood Road is Ernest Hicks and his wife Emma. Hicks was known by his middle name George. George Hicks was a Member of Parliament for Woolwich East from 1931 to 1950. He was a Bricklayer by trade, a Trade Unionist and a founding member of the Socialist Party of Great Britain.

Two interesting households living side by side and an example of how easy it is to discover a new avenue for research.

I am still no wiser about the friendship between my grandmother and the Bennisters and can find no way of finding out now. Arthur Bennister was Schoolteacher, and his father was a tailor. My grandmother and grandfather were Dairy managers in North London. At some point after the First World War there was a connection because of Len Bennister becoming a lodger and scholar in my great grandfather’s house and village. It will forever be a mystery.

One footnote. I did receive a warm email from Len’s son who advised me that he did recall his father being sent to Cambridgeshire, but the details were sketchy. The mystery has gone with Len and my grandmother.