Simon Bernard Levin, known as Bertie, is my maternal great uncle. Levin family HERE. Baum family tree Here. While generally known as Bertie, to the family he was known as SB as his brother-in-law, Berthold Greenhill, was also called Bertie
Born: 4 September 1905 in Liverpool, England
Birth certificate for Simon Bernard Levin. He was born on 4 September 1905 at 165 Islington, Liverpool, England. His parents were Jacob Levin, a travelling draper, and Hannah Levin (Nee Baum)
Jacob's mother's father was Beryl Brouda (1830 - 1874). His Hebrew name was Dov and so Simon Bernard was named after his paternal great grandfather. Dov in Hebrew corresponds to Beryl in Yiddish and Bernard in English
Hebrew name: Shimon Dov, son of Yaakov Tzvi
Schooling
Occupation: Solicitor
Simon Bernard Levin listed in the Solicitors Honours Examination. He sat the exam on 19 March 1928, age 22
Simon Bernard Levin listed in a 1938 Liverpool directory. He set up in private practice on his own, first at 31 Castle Street and later on Renshawe Street, Liverpool. Miss Roberts and Mr Disley were with him all his working life
Married: Brenda Margaret (Peggy) Lyons on 18 August 1937 in Liverpool England. Bertie was 31 years old and Peggy was 27 years old
Children
Their first child, Tessa, was stillborn in 1939 when Bertie was 33 and Peggy 30. Peggy was then told by her doctor to wait several years before trying to have another child. Gillian was born in 1944 when Bertie was 38 and Peggy 35
- Gillian Tessa Levin 1944 -
Census details
1911
Bertie and his family are at 142 Islington Street, Liverpool, England. His father Jacob is 38, a dealer in drapery and has a shop operating from the premises, which has eight rooms. His mother Hannah is 33 and the children are Marcus age 12 and Simon Bernard age 5
Bertie and his family are at 142 Islington Street, Liverpool, England. His father Jacob is 38, a dealer in drapery and has a shop operating from the premises, which has eight rooms. His mother Hannah is 33 and the children are Marcus age 12 and Simon Bernard age 5
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1921
The family is still at 142 Islington Street, Liverpool, England. Jacob died in 1917 and Marcus has taken over the running of the drapery business operating from the premises. Hannah is 43 and the children are Marcus age 22, Simon Bernard age 15 and Gertrude Esther age 4
The family is still at 142 Islington Street, Liverpool, England. Jacob died in 1917 and Marcus has taken over the running of the drapery business operating from the premises. Hannah is 43 and the children are Marcus age 22, Simon Bernard age 15 and Gertrude Esther age 4
1939 Register
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Military Service
Electoral registers extracts
From 1933 to 1937 Bertie lived at 62 Hartington Road, Liverpool, with his mother Hannah and sister Gertie
Sport
Death
10 February 1982 in Liverpool, England at 76 years of age following on from a stroke. Buried in the Broadgreen Cemetery, Liverpool, England, plot no R 037.02
10 February 1982 in Liverpool, England at 76 years of age following on from a stroke. Buried in the Broadgreen Cemetery, Liverpool, England, plot no R 037.02
Liverpool Jewish Burial Record for Simon Bernard Levin
Tombstone inscription: Simon Bernard Levin died 10 February 1982 aged 76. Always remembered
Hebrew translation: Reb(=Mr.) Shim’on Dov son of Reb(=Mr.) Ts’vi. Died 17 Sh’vat (5)742. May his soul be bound up in the bond of (eternal) life
Probate
Simon Bernard Levin Probate 15 March 1982. He lived at 195 Woolton Road, Liverpool, England. The value of his estate was £244,563
Telegram
Telegram from Bertie and Peggy to my parents in August 1955 congratulating them on becoming engaged
Letter
Photographs
Peggy, Bertie and Gillian at my parents wedding in Liverpool in April 1956
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Peggie and Bertie Levin and a friend (at right) in Rhodes, Greece in May 1966
Residences
From 1933 to 1937 Bertie lived at 62 Hartington Road, Liverpool, England with his mother Hannah and sister Gertie
Reminiscences
Lightly edited reflections on growing up at 195 Woolton Street by their daughter Gillian
"195
Woolton Road, Childwall, Liverpool 15
The house where I grew up was in the leafy suburb of Childwall. Woolton Road
extended from affluent Childwall, crossing Queens Drive, through Gatacre and
ending in historic Woolton Village.
Our white pebbledash conventional house was a semi, built in the mid 30s and
when my parents married in 1937, they moved in forever and a day.
The top of the welcoming front door, with a mezuzah to the right hand side at
the top, had embedded bowed stained glass so typical of 30s architecture.
There was a path leading up to the entrance with a scrolled low black metal
gate. A narrow flower bed to the right and a small front garden to the left
with a magnificent prunus tree that annually flowered, producing fragrant pink
blossoms. My green fingered mother loved gardening and indulged in the front
and the back garden so we did not need a gardener.
The front room to the left of the entrance had a bay window and was chilly,
only used for traditional Friday night dinners and special gatherings when the
usual suspects would gather for Christmas lunch or a birthday celebration. My
mother would thus creep in on a mid Friday afternoon to switch on the dark
chrome 1930s electric fire to warm up the room for dinner at 7.00 after the Matthew
Bolton silver Georgian candlesticks were lit and the brochas (blessings)
chanted.
Friday night dinners rarely varied. Half a Jaffa grapefruit, browned
under the grill with demera sugar and segmented with a special serrated spoon,
then delicious golden roast chicken, crunchy roasties that only my mother could
make in lard, homemade traditional bread sauce and fresh garden peas that I
would shell with Alma on the terrace. Alma Peters, our maid and lifelong
servant of the Lyons family from Swansea, had faithfully followed her adored
Peggy, my mother, to Liverpool after years of service in the large family
Victorian house in Uplands, Swansea.
In fact my parents were quite anti-social only inviting the immediate small
family and a couple of close friends. Everyone was Jewish from the tight knit
community where my father was the Secretary of the Gothic Grade 1 Princes Road
synagogue in what was nicknamed 'The Jungle' after the West Indian community
had moved into Liverpool 8 in the 50s and 60s in search of a better quality of
life.
I realised later, when I became the 'outsider', that no one who wasn't Jewish,
with the exception of Alma and her second husband Willy who came to wash the
dishes and empty the rubbish, ever came to the house. Well there was always
Doris, the cleaner who managed to break antique ceramics that my mother had to
glue back after they had lost their value. An example was the once valuable
large Victorian green china Lalique smiling cat that stood in the fireplace in
the front room, which I eventually inherited, pieced back together with love!
The small coterie of visitors included Ruth and Sonny David from South Africa
in political exile, miserable, doleful Uncle Abe, a retired doctor from Leeds,
Miriam and Harold Dover, a furniture wholesaler who supplied all the Ercol G
Plan furniture in the house at a special price, bien sur, Uncle Mark and Auntie
Zella, my father's Masonic older brother from Southport and to complete the
family picture, Rubinesque Auntie Gertie and her adored silent husband thin
Uncle Harry minus a third finger he lost in Burma, my mother's elder sister
Auntie Gladys, my maiden aunt whose fiancé was killed in WW1 and materialistic
stout controlling Auntie Tillie, the widow of my Uncle Lewis, the elder brother
of the Lyons family. My third cousin Vivian Morris, back from South
Africa minus a prospective husband, often came round in my teens. Despite our 5
year difference in age, we socialised on the 'Liverpool Scene'
Outside one could hear the birds twittering, mainly sparrows and blackbirds and
I would listen to their birdsong in the morning as my mauve bedroom was in the
front of the house, above the hall with its red and beige swirling thick pile
upon which languished a solitary Victorian mahogany hall chair that no one sat
on. The scrolled black metal mirror reflected the front door adding light in
the dark hall while a ship's bell hung next to the mirror silently rarely
tolling. On the hall table below the mirror, lay my mother's heavy Victorian
brass pestle and mortar. So heavy, you could club an intruder to death with it.
My mother Peggy was a chemist with her own shop in Lark Lane, unusual for a
woman in the 1940s.
Next to the front room was the small diner, the hub of the house that we called
the kitchen, where all the meals were served with the exception of Friday
nights, Xmas and Boxing Day. We ate off a bright yellow Formica table so
typical of the 1950s era. There was a G plan Ercol desk which housed the
Philips record turntable and the beige dial phone by the fireplace.
Every Sunday my mother would listen to either Emil Giles or Vladimir Ashkenazi
playing the Rachmaninov piano concertos while waiting for my father to
arrive home from the Woolton Golf club where he was the captain. You could set
your watch by the time. At 1.00 pm on the dot my father would arrive salivating
in his large blue Ford Zephyr 6 for the mouthwatering Sunday roast. Next to the
desk was a 1930s tiled fireplace with a mantelpiece housing a large 1930s
wooden clock. In the old days the hearth was alight with coal but later on with
coke after the fuel act changed. A sign of the times. In the earlier days I
recall a pulley laden with the laundry as of course there was no washing
machine or dryer. The tiny kitchen was congested with no room to swing our dog
as we had no cat.
The black, tan and white beagle I grew up with had long floppy ears and was
called Samson. I adored him. Years later he was replaced by Ross who finally
had to be put down when he became aggressive and then finally an Ormskirk
heeler called Pluto. I loved dogs and learned to imitate their bleating sound.
The back kitchen led onto the terrace overlooking the rockery and garden. It
was a tiny room with a window looking out to the garage. It housed the stove,
overhead cupboards with hoards of tinned cans left over from days of World War
2 rationing, a sky blue Formica work surface, sink and later on a washing
machine although I remember a wash board as a child. I also recall fresh milk
delivered by horse and cart too and used to give the horse, wearing blinkers,
cubes of sugar!
The back lounge was the main room we lived in. The heavy damask swirly red and
beige curtains matched the thick pile carpet out in the hall and front room.
My father had a lime green upholstered Parker Knoll rocking chair and
would fall asleep while watching the telly after a hard day's work at his legal
office in Renshawe Street. A large mahogany Victorian inherited breakfront
overlooking a lime green, typical 50s sofa, with orange cushions. Oy vey, the
bright fashionable colours of that era!
Upstairs, next to my film star mauve bedroom where I played Elvis 78s, was the
chilly front bedroom with a late 1930s walnut double bed, matching wardrobe and
dressing table with low side cupboards left and right of the bed. This was the
master bedroom but I never recall my parents sleeping in it, only comfortably
off South African relatives. Peggy and Bertie had moved to the smaller twin
bedded back bedroom with another similar walnut wardrobe, housing my father's
Commonwealth stamp collection and a hidden copy, printed in Cairo, of the
banned book 'Lady Chatterley's lover!' I recall seeing my father asleep snoring
on his back with a red Roberts radio on his chest, wearing headphones. Beside
him on the bedside walnut table, green and black crime paperbacks by Erle
Stanley Gardner. My father's hero was the detective Perry Mason at a time when
Raymond Burr played the character on TV.
Then there was the 'sewing room', a tiny spare bedroom where my mother had the
inevitable Singer sewing machine. She made all my clothes and smocking in that
room overlooking the terrace. Spoilt little demanding Gillian would get irritable
endlessly standing while her perfectionist mother measured her up or altered
the hang of a new pastel coloured dress.
We had a dark green metal bench at the bottom of the garden near the sandpit
where I played with the local boys David and Peter. There was a triangular rose
patch and borders of bedding plants on either side of the well tendered lawn.
My mother prided herself as an amateur gardener. She only asked my father once
to do some weeding. He pulled up her new plants instead!
I left the house at the age of 19, when my friend Estelle Irving said it was
about time I left home because she needed a fourth girl to share the decrepit
student house with her and 2 psychology students from Leeds in Withington,
Manchester.
Written in Catherine Smith's NewWriting South Creative a writing workshop
September 2018.