Catalogue description FAMILY PHOTOGRAPHS RELATED TO HENRY JACOB

See also deposit number 2444

Jacob, Henry, b 1916, of Manchester

H. Jacob & Son, Ladies and Gents Tailor, Macdonalds Lane.

Hymie Jacob born 1894 in Kutno, Poland, came to Manchester c.1905. He went to live with his aunt Mrs. Shilco, a widow living in Robert Street, Cheetham. Mrs. Shilco sold drapery on credit from her front room. In 1916 he married Fanny Farber aged 22 who was born in Lodz, Poland and had come to England with Hymie's sister, Rebecca, in 1912 when they were aged 18. They had gone to live in Julia Street, Strangeways, with an aunt and uncle, the Goldberg's. After marriage, Hymie and Fanny went to live at 6 Melbourne Place, Strangeways, where Henry Jacob was born in August 1916, and his sister Sadie in 1918. In 1924 Hymie Jacob went to America and set up a tailoring business with a partner in Lexington Avenue, Harlem. However, after being robbed by his partner, and with his wife Fanny ill with pleurisy in England, Hymie returned to the family who had remained in England in 1925. When he returned the house in Melbourne Place had been sold in preparation for the move to America, and so the family took lodgings in Elizabeth Street, and then Howard Street, where Hymie and now also his son Henry worked at the tailoring business, using the bedrooms as a workshop. They then took a shop in Dantzic Street for 2 years, and then moved to Macdonalds Lane in 1938. During the second world war Hymie Jacob carried on the business making up army uniforms for Reed Brothers of Market Street. Henry Jacob however was called up in 1940. He went to a tribunal to attempt to be registered in a reserved occupation but his appeal was dismissed. He joined the Royal Army Medical Corps. and spent 2 years at a military hospital in Kent. Just after he was called up he married Lilian Beigel, from Great Western Street, Manchester, on October 3rd, 1940. In 1942 Henry Jacob was posted to India, and joined the 27th Indian ambulance train where he spent the rest of the war. He was demobbed in April 1946, and returned to the family tailoring business. Henry's sister Sadie met Keith Bailey an American soldier during the war and returned to Utah with him as a GI bride. Hymie Jacob died in 1959, but Henry carried on in the business until 1970 when the premises on Macdonald's Lane were purchased by the council under a compulsory purchase order for £110, to make way for the Arndale Centre.