'You are not going into business with that Jew!'

It’s interesting how Jenny’s thoughts about our shared relationship with our father are distinctly more focused than mine. She is 18 months older and remembers our father well. On reading the above caption on this photograph she writes:

'This may well be 1957 but more likely to be 1956 as I don’t think that this was your first birthday. You look much too young for one year old – more like three months old I would say. So possibly it could be my second birthday but I think it was more likely to have been your christening now that you’ve discovered that you were christened after all. It’s more likely I think because of the smart clothes that everyone is wearing and especially the long gown and shawl that you are dressed in. An older baby wouldn’t have a shawl like that, especially in the summer. The Photographer was none other than Dada. You can tell by his stance – he has just rushed back to be in the frame. That is why Dadum is carrying me and not Dada and why they are all laughing'

Looking again at the photograph, she is probably right; though 1957 is printed on the border of the photograph, it is not known if the date was added by the camera at the time or by the film processor after the event. For me, it is another example of how one’s own history is like an emergent property of folklore. What strikes me, reading Jenny’s comment, is that she was, even at such a young age, close enough to our father to be able to interpret the photograph so much more accurately than I all these years later. The word ‘Dada’ is to me like a lost land.

Alf and Alf, the two boyhood friends, had married two sisters, Elsie and Vera. The sisters’ eldest brother, Ernest, was Alf Whybrow’s business partner. Alf and Ernie almost fell out over business differences and one such event shows just how entrenched were the family’s views on race. A friend of my grandfather’s was another small businessman called Jack Cohen. He had a grocery business and needed to expand. Sometime after 1945, Jack and my grandfather had the idea of combining their businesses. My grandfather’s business, Castle Sports, had around fifteen shops in and around North London and South Essex; the Cohen’s business was in the same area and of a similar size. Castle Sports was a bike shop that had expanded into electrical appliances, records and hardware and the Cohen business was basically food and groceries. Jack and Alf thought they could sell all their products under one brand and double the size of both businesses. The business was to be called Whyco; Whybrow and Cohen. But my grandmother and her family would not tolerate the plan. On hearing about it my grandmother said 'You are not going into business with that Jew!' So Jack and Alf parted company. Whyco didn’t happen and Jack Cohen made a success of Tesco without the help of my grandfather. Naturally one has to be cautious with such family folklore as the extent of my grandfather’s business relationship with the Cohens is not, as far as I know, documented.

Next>>>

Click here to visit the Nick Nakorn website: