HO 144/11458 and HO 334/55/21328
Elia Alouf Medina, also known as Elia Alouf, was born in Istanbul on December 24, 1886 to Joseph Alouf Medina and Victoria Alouf Medina, both of Italian nationality, as was he. At the age of sixteen, he relocated to England, where he resided from 1904 to 1922. In England, he married Sophie Alouf Medina, who was born on February 26, 1893 in Minsk, Russia and was originally Russian. Her knowledge of English was not good and she relied on the assistance of a Home Office official to fill out the necessary forms. The couple had five children: Robert Alouf Medina (born London, 11/13/1910); Victoria Alouf Medina (born London, 6/12/1913), Annette Alouf Medina (born London, 10/28/1919), Fortunée Alouf Medina (born Paris, 6/16/1922), and Mireille Miriam Alouf Medina (born Paris, 10/13/1929). After sojourns in Holland and Germany, the family relocated to France in 1922 due to “the slump in trade and the difficulty in making a living in England.” Alouf began as a carpet merchant (from 1911) and carpet repairer. In Paris, he became an antique dealer and was still running his own business by 1930.
Alouf first applied for British naturalization on September 8, 1911 out of a desire to vote and was naturalized the following year. In 1930, Alouf’s wife “sprang the mine” by requesting a renewal of her 1917 passport—which she used to join him in France. His naturalization (along with that of his wife and children) was revoked in November 1930 because the Home Office realized he had been living abroad since 1922, and possibly since 1914 in France, he had not maintained connections with “His Majesty’s dominions for the last 7 years,” and did not have “any definite intention of returning to the U.K.” Alouf’s brother, whose record does not appear in The National Archives of the United Kingdom, was deported in 1925. The year his naturalization was revoked, Elia Alouf pointed out to the Home Office that he had “never had any connection with Italy.”
This file was originally classified until 2031.