HO 144/1671/328506 and HO 334/92/8113

            Moise Isaac Franses also spelled his middle name as “Isac,” in accordance with the Sephardi pronunciation of Hebrew. He was born in Salonika on June 14, 1885 to Isaac Moise Franses (deceased by July 7, 1920) and Esther Isaac Franses, née Esther Saporta, who had two additional sons (Albert Isaac, born 1899, and Samuel Isaac, born 1892) and one daughter, who remained in Salonika as a married woman. Moise Isaac’s parents at one point had Dutch citizenship but lost it in the 1890s when Isaac Moise neglected to register himself at the Duch consulate. Isaac Moise’s wife Esther was born on December 23, 1864 and claimed to be originally Spanish by nationality. After losing their Dutch nationality, the couple secured a certificate of Greek naturalization from the Greek Consul in London, which the Home Office ultimately did not recognize as valid. Husband Isaac Moise was deceased by July 7, 1920. The legal confusion over his and his widowed wife’s nationality made things very difficult for her and her children, who arrived in England at different times beginning in the late nineteenth century.

            Moise Isaac Franses was brought to England at the age of 12 in April of 1898 for the purpose of continuing his education. He was enrolled in the Townley Castle School, a boarding school in Ramsgate that was demolished in 1925. He then took a course in commercial training at Pitman’s School London and subsequently enrolled in evening classes. In the years 1903 and 1904, he was employed as a clerk by the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company Ltd.

            During the war, Moise Isaac was engaged in “reconditioning discarded tins with the approbation and encouragement of the Government.” He worked as a manager to an export and commission agency at 36 Camomile Street, Bishopsgate, which was owned by his mother. During the war, he lived successively at Lanark Mansions, Goldhawk Road, Shepherds Bush; Old Oak Road, Acton; 2 Granville Mansions, Shepherd’s Bush, and finally 5 Granville Mansions, where he shared a home with his mother and two brothers. Moise Isaac was single.

            In 1917, when the Franses family tried to sort out their citizenship status, police authorities commented that Moise Isaac and his brother Samuel Isaac should have been registered as Ottomans, referring to the case of Moise Coenca as a parallel. Authorities also alluded to the brothers’ uncle Samuel Moise Franses, of 46 Calcott Road, Brondesbury, who had identified his own parents as Ottoman Jews and had applied for registration as a Greek. In 1920, brothers Moise Isaac and Samuel Isaac informed the Home Office that their family members had “been established and living in London in the Export Trade for close on 40 years.” The first to settle in England was their late uncle, Joseph Moise Franses, who had become a British subject more than thirty years previously.

            Moise Isaac was registered as an alien with Police at the Bow Street Registration Office. In 1918, he and his brother Samuel Isaac petitioned to be removed from the list of enemy aliens. The Home Office decided to reclassify them as “alien friends of uncertain nationality,” in consonance with the case of their uncle.  

            When he applied for naturalization in 1920, Moise Isaac explained that at his father had been a Dutch subject who registered his sons at the Dutch consulate in Salonica at birth. In 1917, Moise Isaac and his two brothers obtained a certificate from the Greek consul in London affirming that they had been Greek nationals since 1914. However, following a decision by the Foreign Office on the Franses case, the Home Office refused to accept the Greek Provisional Government’s recognition of the brothers as Greek, pointing out that such recognition had no standing in municipal or international law. Clearly, the Franses brothers were eager to prevent themselves from being interned as enemy aliens. They were unaware that in one internal memo, a Home Office officials had remarked that it was “practically impossible to intern them.” The legal wrangling suggests that provisional governments did not have power to issue internationally-recognized certificates of citizenship, underscoring why the British government’s loophole of article 32(2) was so important for Christians and Jews of Ottoman nationality.

            During his 22-year residence in England, Moise Isaac had only short absences from the country on business to France, Belgium, Salonica, and Rio de Janeiro.

            Moise Isaac enlisted the same referees as his younger brother: Williams James Barnes, a solicitor’s clerk; Alfred James Bate, an associated accountant who had conducted business with Moise Isaac’s uncle; William Allen Coulson, a clerk and maritime freight manager, who had been friendly with Moise Isaac’s father; Charles James Harry Martin; and George William Luke Simmon, a manager, who had also been friends with Moise Isaac’s father.

            Several parts of Moise Isaac’s file were destroyed, including 1, 3, 4, 4a, and 8. Part of his file includes the naturalization application of his brother younger Samuel Isaac Franses.

            Moise Isaac Franses was naturalized in 1921 and his file declassified in 2022.