Books

Who do you think you are? An author’s journey to uncover her family’s past

Derville Murphy researched her husband’s roots, then reimagined them as a novel

Percy, Margaret and Peggy Wilson

Derville Murphy
Thu May 5 2022 - 06:10

Derville Murphy discovered several years ago, her husband’s grandfather was Jewish – a fact, not spoken about in the family for over 80 years, until it was simply forgotten. Percy Wilson was originally Percival Wingard.

Murphy’s fascination with his story and for the sake of her daughters – it was their heritage too – led her on a journey back as far as 1830 to Kornyn, south of Kyiv in present-day Ukraine. It was there the Wingards originated in Russia’s Pale of Settlement where Tsar Nicholas I forced the Jews to live.

Wingard is not a Jewish name. Its origins are likely Swedish, given to them by the Russians who forced Jews to adopt family surnames. Within the Jewish community, boys traditionally adopted as a second name the first name of their father. My husband’s great-grandfather was Cazreil Ruvain Wingard (b.1832, d.1909). His father was Ruvain, known as Reubin.

In the mid-19th century Russian Jews were not allowed own land and could only engage in limited occupations. Although some achieved commercial success despite these restrictions, most eked out a meagre existence. Life was hard, they were often despised and victimised, and many lived in fear following the Odesa pogrom of 1821, when members of the Jewish community had been brutally murdered.

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But it was probably the fear of conscription that caused Cazreil to flee Kornyn. At the onset of the Crimean war (1853-56) officials known as Happers roamed the country looking for recruits, kidnapping boys as young as eight or nine for the Tsar’s army.

Young Jewish men went to extreme lengths to be considered unfit – with accounts of self-maiming and cutting off fingers. One father gouged out his son’s eyes, leaving him permanently blind – such was their fear of conscription. Apart from spending 10 years away from their families, Jewish soldiers were unable to practice daily prayer rituals or eat kosher food.

Derville Murphy

Cazreil and his young wife Elizabeth travelled across Europe to London where he changed his name to Charles. He became a successful tailor and by 1871 was employing five men and five women in Golden Square, Westminster, a Jewish enclave in the city where they lived with their two children.

With news of a better life, Charles’s parents Reubin and Esther also moved to London. However, Reubin, then 63, did not fare so well. He too worked as a tailor, but in one of London’s many sweatshops, living with his wife and daughters in a tenement at Lowndes Court near Carnaby Street.

Charles’s wife Elizabeth died, aged only 44, in 1880 and he married again the following year to Rosetta ‘Rosa’ Nuremberg, the daughter of a Brighton rabbi. Charles was 49, Rosa 21 years younger. The couple had six children (including Percival, born in 1883) and the family had moved to a less salubrious area in the backstreets of Piccadilly. Charles was no longer an employer, but an employee. Perhaps reflecting the widespread use of sewing machines, and factories that produced clothing more economically.

By 1891 Reubin, Charles’s father, had died and his elderly mother Esther was staying with her daughter Rachel and son-in law Michael Neuman. There seemed to be a decline in the family’s fortunes, and in 1902 Esther became ill and was taken into the workhouse in Tower Hamlets. Within a week she died there aged 97. Her son Charles died seven years later aged 77 and was buried in Edmonton Jewish cemetery in London.

Two years after his father’s death Percy moved to Dublin where he worked as a tailor, boarding in Rathmines. In the 1911 census he gave his religion as Church of Ireland thus distancing himself from his Jewish religion. His mother, the daughter of a rabbi, probably would not have approved. Within two years Percy met Margaret Morgan, Catholic, and they married. By 1919 they were living in Casimir Road, Harold’s Cross.

Jews enjoyed civil liberty in Ireland at the time. Although, as in the rest of Europe, there was covert antisemitism. In Limerick in 1904 Father John Creagh had organised a commercial boycott against them, but his actions were widely condemned in the newspapers. Still, a Jewish name was, in some circles, socially limiting. This is likely to be the reason that when Percy married, he changed his name to Wilson, probably organised privately through a solicitor. Also, there may have been practical reasons to do so. The Catholic Church insisted that children of mixed marriages were brought up as Catholics and baptised to attend Catholic schools. Margaret Morgan, Percy’s new wife, was a Catholic and her children were raised as such.

Percival Montague Wilson ran his own bespoke ladies tailoring shop in 85, then 86 Grafton Street until his death in 1932. Percy and Margaret had five children, the youngest a beautiful and talented singer. Margaret (Peggy b.1923, d. 2020) was a well-known leading lady in the 1940s in the Abbey Theatre’s pantomimes. But Percy’s origins were not spoken about, and simply forgotten. Peggy, only nine when he died, only discovered this when at a family gathering a cousin asked, “why have our grandfathers different names, Wilson and Wingard?”

To author Derville Murphy the research into the Wingard family history uncovered a rich tapestry of Jewish life in Eastern Europe during the nineteenth century.

Putting her research to good use, her first traditionally published novel A Perfect Copy tells the story of Ben Tarrant and Daisy Frome, who discover they both own identical portraits of an enigmatic ancestor. To uncover the paintings’ secrets leads them on a journey of mystery and intrigue from the poverty of Kornyn, to elegant Hapsburg Vienna, and finally Victorian London.

Murphy hopes that by highlighting the family history, her daughters will understand their Jewish roots and hopefully they will never be forgotten again.
A Perfect Copy, published by Poolbeg Press, is available in bookshops nationwide.