HO 405/1710 and HO 334/220/47090
Haim Afia, most commonly known as Victor Afia, was born in Constantinople on May 6, 1908 to Morris (1877/1880-1945) and Doris Afia (1883-1942), whose maiden name was unknown to Haim. His full name while living in the Ottoman Empire had been Haim Affia. His father Morris was a native of Constantinople, while his mother Dora was a native of Brăila, Romania. Both parents were Ottoman when they passed away, but were listed on Haim’s naturalization certificate as Turkish, as was Haim. Haim had an older sister named Clara who was also born in Constantinople (December 23, 1906-July 17, 1988) and by the 1921 census was listed as a carpet repairer working at home. Haim also had three younger siblings: Albert, Pearl, and Fortune (b. ca. 1911, 1913, and 1920, respectively).[1]
In 1913, when Haim was about five years of age, the family immigrated to England. Shortly thereafter, his sister Pearl was born in Shoreditch. Haim was educated at various council schools in the London area until age 16. During the war he served four years in the Upper Thames River Patrol of the Berkshire Regiment of the Home Guard.
Haim left school at the age of 16 to assist his father in the family carpet and textile business. On July 3, 1936 in Hammersmith, Haim married Rose Lydia, née Cowan (1910-2011), who was originally British, but became Ottoman upon marriage.[2] The couple shared two children: Peter Maurice Afia (b. October 5, 1938) and Robert Afia (January 29, 1943). After the death of his father, Haim and his younger brother Albert (a naturalized British subject by the mid-1940s) continued the family business at 74 Duke Street, London. In 1943, they opened another business at 58 High Street, Oxford. The two businesses were conducted as separate entities as far as accounts were concerned, but were run jointly as regards stock. Haim spent most of his time in London but took no money from that business, which was reserved for his brother. The net profit of the Oxford business was reserved for Haim.
In 1947, Haim became a director of Modern Carpets Ltd. of 76 New Cavendish Street, London. This company had been incorporated a decade earlier with a nominal capital of £500, divided into 500 £1 shares. All but two of the shares were held by Jean Cowan, Haim’s sister-in-law, who lived at 74 Reading Rd., Henley-on-Thames. The other director was Morris Cohen of 14 Weymouth Street, South Ealing, who was employed as manager of A. and V. Afia, the Afia brothers’ business at Duke Street. Modern Carpets Ltd. had gone dormant in 1941. That year, Afia took over the debts of the company, amounting to some £400, and made a private agreement with the creditors to settle in two installments of 2/6 to the pound. All papers relating to this financial arrangement were destroyed when the office of Afia’s accountants was destroyed by enemy action.
Home Office enquiries in trade circles showed that Afia and his brother were “favourably regarded in the carpet trade.” When he applied for citizenship, he described himself as a dealer in antiques, textiles, and carpets. In 1945-1946, the family income greatly increased through Haim’s wife, who opened a green grocery business in Heney-on-Thames. The store had closed by the time of his application.
The Home Office noted that although Haim was a “keen businessman and a recognised expert on antique carpets and tapestries in the trade,” he was “very lax in the keeping of accounts and receipts” and it was challenging for his accountants to obtain from him the data necessary to create balance sheets.
In the 1930s and ’40s, Haim had a few court judgments against him, one for defaulting on his rent (the landlord eventually wrote the amount off as a bad debt); failure to pay for car repairs (Afia claimed the matter had been settled, although he never paid the debt, and the company had since ceased to exist), and a dispute with a customer about a curtain purchased from Haim which was allegedly “not as specified.” The court ruled that Haim was obligated to refund the full amount of £45. He also had three minor traffic violations, but the records had been destroyed by the time of his application. These legal issues caused Home Office officials to hesitate in approving Haim’s application. Ultimately, they reasoned that the judgment against him in 1941 was “of a business nature,” and therefore should not “prejudice this application,” while the judgments of 1933 and 1940 were “long enough ago to be regarded lightly for our purposes.” Haim’s strong financial circumstances (yearly net profits for the years 1945-1947 were £532.0.4; £886.14.0; and £1,339.15.5), service in the Home Guard during the war, long residence in the country, and the British-born status of some of his family members convinced the Home Office to approve the application.
Haim had four referees, including a general dealer, who had known him for 20 years in business and socially and remarked that he was “ English in his outlook on life as we know how it should be lived.” All of Haim’s referees appear to have been Anglo-British with the exception of Louis Leon Hershman, who was likely an Ashkenazi Jew.
Haim’s Ottoman background and lack of citizenship papers made travel nearly impossible. Between 1939 and the year of his application, Belgium had been his only foreign destination. The agents Haim had hired to submit his naturalization application noted in 1948 that their client was “extremely well-known” in the antique business and that it was “necessary for him to make trips to the Continent to buy and sell antiques.” They explained that his clientele both before and after the war consisted of “people from America.” These clients, they emphasized, “brings into this country much needed dollar currency at this time.” With this argument of enlightened self-interest, they urged the Home Office to expedite Haim’s application.
The lenient stance of the Home Office may be partly explained by the time period, during which officials may have grown more lenient towards Ottoman-origin applicants. One official noted, for example, that Haim “was brought here at the age of five so shall be thoroughly assimilated.” Notable in this quote is the idea that acculturation for an Ottoman immigrant was a matter of time, not of race.
Haim possessed no documentary proof of his loss of Ottoman nationality. Turkish authorities had refused to grant him a passport because he did not have proof of his nativity there. Haim was thus stateless, but the Home Office nonetheless directed him to declare himself Turkish on his naturalization certificate. He had lived in England for 35 years by the time of his naturalization. Subfile 1/1 was destroyed. His naturalization application was originally closed until 2049 and declassified on October 1, 2015.
He died in Westminster, London, on December 8, 1992.[3]
[1] 1921 England Census, Afia family, London, Hammersmith. Dora Afia’s maiden name was Doretta Nischli. Her son was Laurence Simons (1930-1993). Some of this information comes from https://www.ancestry.com/genealogy/records/clara-afia-24-b93hn8 (accessed February 12, 2026).
[2] Rose’s dates come from https://www.ancestry.com/genealogy/records/haim-victor-afia-24-b91pt5 (accessed February 12, 2026).
[3] https://www.ancestry.com/genealogy/records/haim-victor-afia-24-b91pt5 (accessed February 12, 2026).