The Streets of London...

The Dunn Saga (Revisited)

Rebecca and Simon Dunn (left and centre left) in London's East End, after their return from  eleven years in South America

Following their return to England from Chile in 1913, the Dunn family resettled in the East End of London. They had moved to Punta Arenas Tierra Del Fuego, a Chilean Naval Port some eleven years earlier. The reason for their original move been that Simon and Rebecca (A.K.A. Rivella) simply wanted a better life for themselves and their first born, Millie. It is thought that Simon whose Hebrew name Yeshua Leib was born in Lithuania, probably the town of Kaišiadorys, within the Vilna district. It may come as shock to the modern-day reader, but Simon and Rebecca were first cousins. First cousin marriage became customary amongst Hassidic Jews in the late nineteenth century. This was primarily because boys were press ganged into joining the Russian army as child soldiers from as young as twelve years of age. This was known as the “Canton System”. So marriages were often hastily arranged to ensure the survival of the family bloodline. Often the only available suitor would be a cousin, who lived in the same shtetl or one in a nearby village or town.

Settling in the East Ham area of London, which is now part of the deprived district of Tower Hamlets, the family would re-establish links with family they had left behind around 1902, when they left the shtetl of Whitechapel. (Whitechapel mayn Vaytshepl). These would include the families of Simon’s half brother Charles, and their cousins, brothers; master tailor Lazarus and West End grocer Harris Dunn. Simon, Rebecca, Millie (Emelia), Robert, Sophie (Sofia), Mary (Ana Maria), Frances (Fanny) and David were due to sail back to the Americas, planning to make the long and arduous sea trip to settle in California. They would be joining Rebecca’s sister Golda Levy (nee Romanofsky) and her husband and familiy who were in New York. Sarah had married Henry Herman Poirier, son of Berl Birnbaum, while had Golda married Joseph Leszerovich Levy. 

Berl Birnbaum was born in Holland in 1838 and emigrated to Bucharest, capital of Rumania. His son Herman (Henry) was probably born in Bucharest on 20th March 1871, being the fourth of eight children. Herman ran away from home aged about seventeen travelled to Marseille, an ancient Mediterranean trading port in the south of France. He changed his name to Poirier, a French transliteration of the Dutch/Germanic Birnbaum, both meaning in English, pear-tree. After spending a couple of years in Marseille, Henry, as he was probably now known in his newly adopted Gallic homeland would then up sticks again. This time he would make the horrendous journey across the Atlanic Ocean, around the Straights of Magellan and the on to a Chilean Port. Punta Arenas Tierra Del Fuego, which lies strategically right at the Southern tip of the Latin American territory. This cold and inhospitable corner of the globe was a relative haven of tranquility for the weary ocean going traveller before the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914. Herman allegedly had jumped ship to Punta Arenas from Marseille, it is suggested he would have worked as a ships’ chandler, an important logistical position on a sea going vessel. Upon settling in the icy climate of Puntas, Herman began to trade with the local Native American Indian tribes for fur. This was clearly an important commodity in keeping warm and well, for it is rather chilly in Chile!

At the tip of Chile: The location of Punta Arenas

Herman made a substantial amount of capital with this lucrative trading. His business acumen persuaded him to open a trading post, essentially a shop selling “odds and sods” or curio’s, short for curiosities. It is documented, according to the present day Henry Poirier, of Bishops Stortford, Herefordshire, England, that our distant kinsman also helped to equip one of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Antarctic expeditions to the bottom of the world, the South Pole. However which of the esteemed polar explorer’s expeditions he supplied is a mystery until further proof, if any is unearthed. But there is no reason at all to dispute such a claim.

Herman though successful in business yearned for a much fuller meaning in his life. He wanted to feel more complete and sought love and companionship. He set sail for these distant Isles, and upon landing, made his way to the Jewish community of Whitechapel, London, England. He found a reception of sorts just off Old Montague Street, near Mile End, on Dunk Street.

Sarah Romanofsky was the youngest of six siblings, Hannah, Golda, Rebecca (a.k.a. Revela) Chaim I, Sara and Bashkeh. They were the children of Dvera nee Epstein and Moisha Laibe Romanofsky, the grandchildren of Menachin Laibe and Baile Epstein and the great grandchildren of Chaim and Golda Epstein.

The date set for the life and times of Chaim and Golda is circa 1780. This is around the time that Catherine the Great of Russia decreed that all inhabitants of her Empire be recorded on an official census. This would of course include all Jews who were at the time living within the Pale of Settlement. In order to be recorded, people had to adopt a lasting surname, such as Epstein. The Hebrew tradition meant that the name was passed down only to the next generation. This would dictate that Dvera Epstein would be Dvera bat Menachin. Menachin Epstein would be Menachin ben Moisha, etc. The Epsteins are believed to have resided in a shtetl in Vilnus (Vilna), Lithuania.

So it came to be that around 1902, Herman Poirier was in the East-End of London looking for a potential suitor. Sarah Romanofsky was then living with her sister and brother in-law, Rebecca and Simon Dunn. The Dunn’s had come to England from Lithuania to escape the pogroms. They arrived in London aged about 22, like many a refugee, hoping to find the opportunities in the land where “the streets are paved with gold”. According to “The Dunn Saga”, a document relating the story of the Dunn Family, written down by Mary Horne (nee Dunn) in 1988 a very wealthy man from Chile came to London looking for a Jewish wife. He was of Romanian birth. Mary’s aunt Sarah wanted to introduce her friend to this very wealthy man but he said “No”, he wanted her. She was young and very beautiful. He told Mary’s father, Simon of all the riches and wonders of Chile and how one could make a lot of money and seize great opportunity’s there. Simon was young and he too had the wanderlust. After hearing all these tales, he was asked to go back with Herman. Herman would die prematurely a few years later at the all too young age of 44, in 1915.

Meanwhile the Dunn family were been shunned by other people in their immediate community, likely close family for allowing Mary’s Aunt Sarah to go back with him. They said he was a white slave trafficker and would exploit those who followed him across the world. So Mary’s father, Simon decided he wanted to try his luck. He hated being a tailor and so he said to his wife, “I’ll go and then when I’ve made some money I’ll send for you and Millie”, the Dunn’s only child at the time. Rebecca said, “No, if you go I go too.”

They had no money, but this man lent them their passage. He travelled first. They travelled third, but all was well and Simon opened a shop of curios as this man had. They learned to speak Spanish. The destination they arrived at and settled in was a seaside port on the map and is very rich now. It played a key role in the Falklands War. Punta Arenas Tierra Del Fuego. Now it is a naval base, but then it was quite small.

The ships came in and traded. Simon would go about buying from the Indians in the wild and trade skins for food and quite possibly alcohol and other beverages. In the shop the Dunn’s sold curios - Ostrich Eggs, Eagle Feathers – things the Indians made and exchanged. Rebecca hankered for Yiddish Keit and kept as beat as she could. Trefer food she Koshered. So Robert, Sophia, Mary, Frances and David were born. Millie was born in London, before the family left for distant shores.

Punta Arenas under snowfall , early 20th Century

It was when Millie became fourteen that they said it was time to move, as they did not want intermarriage. And then they decided to come to London to see Rebecca’s parents, Mary’s grandparents, Dvera and Moisha Laibe Romanofsky. The plan was to come to London, which they did, and then settle in California, U.S. but the 1914-1918 war started and hence they stayed in England. Her two brothers, Robert and David were circumcised when they got there. David was still a toddler at the time, having been born in 1911, but Robert was much older.

Mary’s Aunt Sarah lived in Punta Arenas and had two sons and two daughters. There was only one left when she recorded this story in 1988, Carmelita Gordon, wife of a renowned architect. They were still keeping in touch with each other back then, so many years after moving away from one another. The others were Arturo (Arthur), Freida and Bernard. They would go on to marry folk in California and have many, many descendants, including the names of Shott, Daley, Gordon, Davidoff, Miller and of course Poirier.

Whilst still on the subject of the Birnbaum-Poirier connection, it is worth mentioning one or two things. Henry’s son, Arthur told his son Henry that originally the Birnbaums came from Spain, meaning they were of a Sephardic, Ladino speaking Jewish stock. Upon the onset of the dreadful events of the Spanish Inquistion, the family sailed northwards to Holland, land of tulips and windmills amongst other things. It is likely they would have settled in Amsterdam, which became a thriving commercial capital, fuelled by the riches and moneyed wealth of its prosperous Jewish financiers. The exiled Jewish family would adopt the more Dutch/Germanic sounding surname to which we are familiar, Birnbaum and would become assimilated with their fellow Jews appearing as Ashkenazi. The Sephardic roots would become fainter and fainter. Then yet again, as we know there would be another name change to the current Poirier.

The present day Henry Poirier tells us that in an old prayer book which he believes once belonged to his Great Grandfather Berl Birnbaum, he found a slip of paper, on which it was written in Hebrew “Rabbi Moses Ben Maimon 1135-1204, born in Cordova”. This was of course Moses Maimomides, the great Jewish thinker and philosopher. It would indeed be quite exciting if he was an ancestor connected with that side of the family. There is also a reference to Rabbi Schlaimoh Yelchaki, born in France in 1040, who died in 1105.

The other sister of Rebecca, Golda Levy and her husband Joseph (Leszerovich) Levy had also emigrated to Punta Arenas at the same time as the Poirier’s and Dunn’s. The Levy’s stayed on in Punta for a few more years. They then once again moved, this time to New York. Golda Levy had three daughters while living in Punta, and had two more daughters when in New York. Mary noted that only one remains, who at the time she wrote the Dunn Saga down, was living in Los Angelos (sic), California. Mary also remarked that, herself, Carmelita and the unnamed Levy daughter were the only three who were left of the family who went to Chile. It can be deduced by looking at the Epstein Family Tree that the unnamed mystery daughter was either Bertha, Rebecca, Mary, Anita or Helen Levy. Of course these sisters would marry and change their names. Bertha became Mrs Henri Strauss, Rebecca became Mrs Abraham Zaslow and Mary became Mrs Alfred Abraham Brenner, later remarrying to became Mrs Louis Kremer. Anita would become Mrs Henry (Henny) Leder and Helen became Mrs Max May. Bertha would die in 1975, Mary in 1967, Anita also around 1967 and Helen in 1961. This would leave Rebecca Zaslow as the mystery surviving Levy sister from Mary (nee Dunn) Horne’s tale of life in the wilds of Chile. She would die in New York aged 98 and a half. The Levy’s would go forth to multiply and be fruitful and their descendant’s names include Brenner, Budziszewski, Sabo, Zaslow, Katzman, Leder and Myers.

The Poirier, Levy and Dunn familes, Punta Arenas Chile circa 1909 (Photo courtesy of Alan and Shirley Marks of Melbourne, Austrailia and Harold Jacob of Manchester)

The Dunn’s lived in Chile for eleven years. Mary thought of her mother, Rebecca as “wonderful as she lived just as a pioneer.” She would draw water from a pump four, turnings along the road. The houses were wooden, mounted on wheels perhaps like trailers or caravans. They spoke Spanish and Yiddish, but as soon as they got to England, they were so happy to learn English and forget the other. Rebecca, Simon, their eldest children Millie and Robert spoke Spanish. After they left for England, her aunt Sarah stayed on with four children till her husband Herman died of sugar diabetes in about 1915, leaving her a wealthy widow. She came back to England and lived with the Dunn’s in East Ham. The third sister, Golda (nee Romanofsky) Levy and her family headed north from Chile, laying down roots in New York. Her daughter has been historically placed as Rebecca Zaslow, who lived out her lengthy old age in the glorious sunshine of Los Angeles, California.

So the Dunn family was on course to following the Poirier’s and Levy’s to North America, planning to venture into what was then the newly opened up land of California, and the boom town that was Los Angeles. However the course of history altered their planned path when on the 28th June 1914 an Austrian Arch Duke was assassinated by a young Serbian anarchist. Gavrillo Principe’s shooting of heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Franz Ferdinand sparked off a chain of events which would include the permanent settling of the Dunn family in the U.K. Well at least for the next 60 years, until one of David Dunn’s three children, his youngest daughter Sandra would marry a fellow London Jew, Bruce Gray and yet again the intrepid travelling spirit would rear its curios and ambitious head. That however is a story for and from another time and place. The time been 1975 and the place been Johannesburg, South Africa.

By the time America stepped into the Nineteen Forteen to Eighteen War,  Simon Dunn’s half brother Charles Jacob Dunn joined up to serve in Uncle Sam's U.S. Army. Charles’s presence in the army can be noted from a portrait of him and three of the Dunn siblings, taken around 1918. In the photograph Simon’s brother Charles is seen surrounded by his nieces and nephew Sofia, David and Mary. He is dressed in military uniform of the World War One era, defined in detail by his shoulder epaulettes, trouser garters and boots or footwear. They would be quite typical of the period. His youngest nephew David would appear to be aged seven or eight which fits the time frame nicely, as his birth date was the 13th June, 1911.

Uncle Charles Dunn with Sofia, David and Mary, circa 1918. Photo courtesy of the The Horn Family

Millie, the oldest of the six siblings would marry Max May, but as far is it is deduced by reading into the extensive Epstein Genealogical Chart, the couple would be childless, as there are no marked descendants on the family tree. It has been told that they tried to have children but sadly Millie miscarried several times. She died prematurely in her 50's in the 1950's. Max May later married Helen Levy the sixth and youngest daughter of Rebecca Dunn’s sister, Golda Romanofsky and her husband Joseph Levy. So efectively Millie and Helen were cousins who grew up together in a small Jewish Community in southernmost Chile and eventually would marry the same man. Helen Levy was born around 1913 in Chile and died 17th June 1961.

To avoid any confusion, however there is at least another Millie Dunn in the family. She was the daughter of Harris Dunn, who also had three sons. Harris had a grocery business in the West End of London. Harris’s brother Lazarus was a master tailor. He employed his cousin Simon Dunn (Yeshua Leib) as a tailor when Simon first arrived in London. Lazarus had a large family, and this is recorded in the 1901 census. He was born somewhere in Russia, likely to be Vilnius, Lithuania in about 1867, making him 34 in 1901. His mother is simply known as Fanny Dunn, aged 59, so born about 1842. They lived in the civil Parish of Kensington, London at the time of the census. Lazarus’s wife was called Annie and they had between them at least five children. The oldest was Benjamin, 11, then David, 10, Millie 8, Marcus, 5 and Kate, 3. Also living with them was what is thought to be a lodger, simply listed as “Cohen, 35”. It must be noted however that the name Lazarus is spelt with an “e” as in Lazerus in Auntie Mary's letter. The question here is: is Millie Dunn the same Millie who was Harris Dunn’s daughter? Or are they simply first cousins who share the same name? Perhaps they had been named after another Millie, who had passed away such as a grandmother. There are at least three Millie Dunn’s appearing in records around this time, 1901 to 1903 and the written knowledge of the late Mary Horne.

Millie, daughter of Harris the grocer would marry Turkish born “Froom” Jew Victor Isaac Behar. The Behars had two daughters and would establish roots northwards, in Glasgow, Scotland. These were Elaine and Pearl. Elaine married a man only know as Naddell, having one daughter by him. This was Rachelle who wed Matthew Remes. They had two sons, Andrew and Michael.

During the Second World War, Mary Horne and her father Simon Dunn had stayed with the Behars. It was in the Behars house that Mary would meet her future husband Maurice. Mary and Maurice Horne, whose name had been anglicized from the Germanic Hornstein would go on have two children, Stephen and Ruth. Stephen would marry Lydia and have three children, Mathew a solicitor, Sasha and Simon who works in behind the scenes the television industry, who are at present in or around their thirties. Stephen and Lydia would divorce in the 1990’s. Stephen’s sister Ruth married David Langdorf, and they also had three children, Tara Michele, born about 1977, Abbie born around 1978 and Elliot who was born around 1980.

Robert Dunn another sibling born in Chile would marry Gertie Kliman. (This name is also frequently spelt as Kleiman and Clayman). He lived in Middlesex, England. Robert and Gertie would have two daughters, Frances and Rosalind. Frances married a guy whose surname was Attia and had two sons, Hesham, born in 1977 and Karim, born 1979. The couple later divorced, and Frances remarried, to Fred Street. Rosalind married David Small, and the couple had 3 children, Denise, Sharon and Gary all born after 1967. Both Frances and Rosalind now live in Dorset. Hesham lives in Brazil with his wife and baby son. Robert was a keen stamp collector, as his nephew Raymond Dunn remembers his fantastic collection well, from his childhood in the 1950’s. He also ran boys outfitters shop in Whitechapel.

Bobby Dunn - Roberts clothing shop in Whitechapel (picture courtesy of Frances Street)

Sofia Dunn, who was born in Chile in about 1904 would marry Alec (Alexander) Kritz in the late 1920’s. The couple lived in East London and had two sons, Warner born in 1929 and his younger brother Michael, born 6 years later in 1935. Michael would marry Susan Rose, born about 1939 and they would have a son and a daughter, Stefan and Danielle. Stefan was born in 1964 and Danielle in 1966. Stefan married Lisa Rayner, while Danielle married Daniel Bush. Michael and Susan have four grandchildren.

A little more information is known about Warner than about his brother Michael. From his own entry in the Epstein Family Tree, he tells us that “after serving in the Royal Air Force as a conscript, I went to London University and qualified as an Optometrist in 1952.” He would then marry Anita Sherman at Brenthouse Road Synagogue, Hackney in East London in September 1954. At some point in time, Warner would change his surname from Kritz, to the more British sounding Kenton. This was probably done to avoid Anti-Semitism while trying to further his career. So Warner and Anita Kenton would bring into the world three daughters, Jillian Simone, born 1956, Ruth Susan, born 1958 and Naomi, who was born in 1963. When their first born, Jillian was just six months old, the family would move to the Welsh capital city of Cardiff, as a means of Warner progressing with his career as an Optometrist. After 38 years of marriage, Warner and Anita divorced. Warner then made Aliya, emigrating to Jerusalem, capital city of Israel. It was there that he met Sadi “Flo” Florence Tavor, later marrying her. Warner has enjoyed an array of hobbies and past-times, which when in Wales included socialising, playing competition bridge and gardening. As an Israeli citizen he enjoys carpentry and other D.I.Y (Do It Yourself, surfing the internet and has continued to play competition bridge and enjoys working in his garden.

Warner’s first born Jillian, married David Levin in 1976 and the couple moved to the Caribbean Islands of the Bahamas and had three children. Alex was born in 1979, Daniel in 1981 and Sofia in 1983. When youngest daughter Sofia was only a baby the couple divorced in 1984. Jill returned to Cardiff where she still lives to this day. In 1986 Jill got married for a second time. She married Isaac Boon and the couple had a daughter, Candice in 1987. A few years later, the couple would divorce. Jillian’s first husband David Levin would move to sunny Miami in Florida, U.S.A. where he is still living with his second wife. Warner’s second daughter, Ruth had a son, Elliot in 1990, though she never married. Warner’s youngest daughter Naomi has never married nor had any children.

Warner was virtually forgotten about by the Bradford based branch of the Dunn family until one day in 1999. The only knowledge of him was of a boy of about seven, who appeared on a couple of old photograph taken in 1936/37. In one of these photographs, taken in 1936 Warner is standing in front of his maternal Grandparents and his uncle David. He is looking sideways right towards an object or person distracting his gaze from the lens of the camera. Everyone else is looking right into the camera. On the back of this photo is written in pencil, Nana, Dad, Uncle Dave and Warner, Bournemouth 1936. In the other photo, Warner is on a beach with his uncle David and a mystery woman, possibly one of David's girlfriends before he married Yetta Hurst in 1938. Another possibility is that is Sofia Kritz, Warner and Michael's mother.

Warner with his Grandparents Simon and Rebecca and his uncle David, Bournemouth 1936.