HO 144/5663/HO and 334/102/13326
Jules Aaron Abody was born in Baghdad on October 17, 1869 to Aaron and Zebeda Abody, née Morris, both Ottoman subjects who were deceased by 1925. His nationality was registered as “Ottoman (Native of Iraq).” Abody had three sisters living in Baghdad, a brother Jacob Aaron Abody, who was a merchant in Marseilles, and another brother Joseph Abody, who died in 1918 while on active service with the French Army. At the age of 13, Abody accompanied his aunt, Mrs. Sassoon, to India, and lived in Bombay with her and her husband. Abody was educated in Bombay and was employed for about six years by Messrs. Sassoon and Co. in India. He left the country for England in 1889 at the age of 19 in the company of Silas Sassoon, visiting various cities in Europe en route. During the year or so following his arrival in England, Abody attended a school in Brighton. He then moved in with friends in London and, within a few months, began to work for Messrs. Alpco Pencils, Limited, the British subsidiary of the American Lead Pencil Co.[1]
In London, Abody resided at 25 Montague Street, West End (1896-1918), 13 Bedford Place, West End (1918-1920), 11 Barkston Gardens South West (1921-1922), and finally at 15 Kensington Park Road, Notting Hill, where he rented a “bed-sitting room.” His occupation was alternately listed as traveler, mercantile representative, sales manager, and senior travelling representative of Messrs. Alpco Pencils, Limited, where he had worked for over 30 years. Each week, Abody spent Mondays through Thursdays traveling in the provinces. On Fridays, he visited the offices of his firm at 173/175 Lower Clapton Road. The Home Office noted that Abody usually played golf near Tunbridge Wells every weekend. He spent little time in his rented quarters, often staying in the country on weekends, and passed spare evenings in London at the Junior Constitutional Club, a Conservative political London gentlemen’s club in Piccadilly, where Abody had been a member since 1912. In 1925, his annual salary was £500, with expenses. He also earned revenues from investments in British stock. At the time of his final application in 1925, he was a customer at Barclay’s Bank, 170 Fenchurch Street, E.C., where he had an account for over 30 years. He appeared to Home Office officials “to be in a comfortable financial position.”
Once in England, Abody did not travel much. He took four annual holidays before 1914 in the South of France, two to three weeks at a time. In August 1906, he spent one week in Marseilles. Abody was granted exemption from internment and restriction by the Home Office on November 1915 after he presented police with a declaration of his opposition to the “Turkish Regime.” This exemption certificate, typically issued to Armenians and Greeks, was later found to be “irregular,” given Abody’s status as a Jew, and was withdrawn. At that point, Abody was barred from entering certain prohibited places. In July 1917, he obtained another certificate of exemption, this time under the Aliens Restriction (Natives of Mesopotamia) Order, after satisfying the police that he was both “a Jew and a native of Mesopotamia.” His reasons for applying for naturalization were that his financial interests were in England, that he intended to marry a British-born woman and remain in England, and that he wished “for the right to vote and obtain British protection.”
Over the years, Abody appointed several well-placed individuals as advocates. In 1914, he designated Sir William Bull, an English solicitor and Conservative Party politician (1863-1931) to apply for naturalization on his behalf and submitted “several letters from well known people” attesting to his loyalty. Among these was Abody’s cousin Joseph S. Sassoon, of Joseph S. Sassoon & Co., Mark Lane. His agents, Messrs. Simmons and Simmons, twin brothers who founded an international law firm in 1896, also engaged in name-dropping to further Abody’s case. In 1922, one of the partners, Sir Percy Simmons, wrote the Home Office that the “Sassoon family, whom doubtless you know,” would be happy to relay any information regarding their client.
Although clearly an Ottoman subject, Abody claimed that he did not have any birth certificate, passport, or other nationality document, and tried to convince the Home Office that he was not Ottoman. At one point, he indicated that he had applied for British naturalization in September 1914, but the war broke out against the Ottoman Empire before the certificate could be issued. “It was a carelessness on my part,” he reflected, “that I had no naturalization certificate all those years.” Messrs. Simmons and Simmons explained to the Home Office in June of 1914 that Abody “was employed for about 6 years by Messrs. Sassoon and Co., and in 1899 he was naturalised in India, but had unfortunately lost his certificate.” However, when Abody reapplied in 1925, he contradicted this information, indicating that his solicitors “were never authorised by him to make those statements,” which were incorrect, and that he “was never employed in India by Messrs. Sassoon and he was never naturalised there.” Abody was obviously attempting to retroactively change the facts, for in a letter to the Home Office dated January 14, 1915, he had made a similar claim about being naturalized in India. When the Home Office questioned him about his nationality in 1925, he could not “give any details of such naturalisation,” explaining only that “he was generally recognised as a British subject while there.” Abody also told the Home Office that he “considers he has lost his Ottoman citizenship by reason of continued absence from his native country.”
Home Office officials were not convinced of any of Abody’s narratives. They noted that when he presented his case as a foreigner in 1912, in his first naturalization application, he had never mentioned being naturalized in India. In 1922, Home Office officials decided to consider him as an Ottoman Jew. The previous year, the Home Office had created a loophole for Ottoman Jews of Iberian origin to claim their nationality as “Ottoman (Spanish Jew),” thereby allowing them to fall in exception (b) of section 3(2) of the British Nationality and Status of Aliens Act of 1918, which qualified for naturalization “a member of a race or community known to be opposed to the enemy governments.” However, after careful consultation with their in-house legal counsel Oscar F. Dowson in 1922, Home Office officials decided that Abody was debarred for 10 years after the termination of the war from being considered for citizenship. Abody’s solicitors tried to argue that his status as a Jew qualified him for §3(2) of the British Nationality and Status of Aliens Act of 1918, but the Home Office rejected that argument, explaining that this section did not extend to Ottoman Jews generally. They also noted that they had hitherto refused to regard “Mesopotamian or Bagdad Jews” as eligible for naturalization. Home Office officials suggested in 1925 that Abody take advantage of a new Iraqi nationality law which allowed persons born in Iraq on or before August 6, 1926 and resident elsewhere to be considered for Iraqi citizenship. Abody declined, noting that acquiring that nationality “is a tedious task.”
In attempting to bypass the Home Office’s blockades, Abody was both persistent and creative. In 1925, he presented to the Home Office a Certificate signed in August by the Acting Chief Rabbi in Baghdad, who indicated that Abody had left his native city 40 years previously and that as a member of the Jewish community there “he was opposed to Turkish rule.” That same year, an “English lady” named Miss K. Braithwaite Cleary, of 51 Fairholme Road, Barons Court, identifying herself as Abody’s fiancée, called the Home Office to inquire about Abody’s naturalization application.[2] Cleary had vowed to her mother on her mother’s deathbed 18 months previously “that she would not marry him unless he became an Englishman.” The young woman was “very anxious that his naturalisation should go through.” She underscored that Abody had lived in England for a very long time, had no connection with his country of birth, was a member since 1912 of the Junior Constitutional Club, and that the Sassoons knew him well and would speak for him.” Home Office officials apprised Cleary “of the prohibition against naturalising enemy aliens for 10 years after the war.” They noted that she was “much distressed at the prospect of having to wait another 4 years and asked if there was no way of getting round the difficulty.” In 1925, Abody attempted to bribe the Home Office’s legal counsel Oscar F. Dowson, who sharply rebuked him: “I am writing you…merely to correct your impression…anything I have done or shall do to assist you in this matter is in anyway outside my official duty. No question of payment can therefore in any circumstances arise.” The handwritten minutes show that behind the scenes, Home Office officials were making an exerted effort to accommodate Abody, wondering whether he could prove his story of naturalisation in India and demonstrate he had lost his “Turkish” nationality owing to long residence in England. After Abody filed his 26th application, the officials noted that the eligibility of Baghdadi-born Ottoman Jews had changed and they had already entertained applications from several persons in Abody’s position. In considering his case, the Home Office compared Abody to Leon Isaacs (born in Iraq and naturalized in 1925), Max Haim Solomon (an “Ottoman (Spanish Jew)” who served as a litmus test for Ottoman Jews qualifying for exception (b) of section 3(2) of the British Nationality and Status of Aliens Act of 1918), Paul Havine, a Maronite Arab from Syria named Alexander Akras (naturalized in 1922), an Ottoman Greek named Christos Halkias (naturalized in 1922), an Ottoman of Polish descent named Severin Oswald de Bilinski (resident in Istanbul and naturalized in 1922), and David Somekh from Iraq (naturalized in 1930). It is evident from this quest for precedents that Home Office officials did not reason arbitrarily or whimsically, but rather legally.
Abody’s referees were James Savage, a mercantile clerk at Alpco Pencil Company, who had known him professionally and socially for over six years; Bernard Henry Clamp, a sales manager it the same firm who knew him for over 26 years and was a close friend who frequently dined with Abody at his (Abody’s) club; Henry William Tice, a warehouse foreman at the same firm for over 27 years who knew Abody professionally; Thomas Reginald Saturley, a works manager in the same firm who knew Abody for 16 years and occasionally dined with him at the aforementioned club and invited Abody to his home; and Ernest S. Lawrence, who knew Abody for six years in the same firm and met him weekly for business.
By the time he applied for naturalization for the final time in 1925, Abody was 56 years old and had lived in England for 36 years. He was naturalized on April 24, 1926. He died in Dublin in 1944, leaving behind his widow Ethel Kathleen Abody and effects worth more than £2,592. In her own will, recorded in 1958, Ethel Kathleen left her her real and personal estate to her brother Lieut. Col. Edmund John Cleary and bequeathed modest sums to two bank officials, one from Barclay’s Bank and the other from the Provincial Bank of Ireland. Perhaps alluding to tensions with her husband’s birth family, she added: “I hope to help my late husband’s people during my lifetime if they are as noble and loyal to me as he was.”
Subfiles 1-20, 22-25, and 30 were destroyed. Abody has applied for naturalization 30 times. This file was originally closed until 2027 and declassified at my request in 2019.
[1] https://fredspencils.wordpress.com/2011/07/03/alpco/ (accessed August 19, 2024).
[2] Her full name was Ethel Kathleen Abody (died Dublin, 1/15/1958).