HO 144/10287
Vitali Elnecavé was born in Constantinople on July 24, 1890 to Nessim Elnecavé and Zimboul Elnecavé, née Levy, both Ottoman subjects and both classified by the Home Office as “Ottoman (Spanish Jews),” as was Vitali.[1] Vitali was educated at the Alliance Israélite Universelle of Istanbul until about 19 years of age. Nessim had worked as an antiques dealer in Constantinople, in partnership with Vitali Franses Frères, who by the 1920s lived at 1 du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, Paris. Nessim died in Constantinople in 1915. Zimboul was registered with London police as a Turkish national. She died in London on February 13 ,1927.
1 du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, Paris, home of Vitali Franses Frères, antiques dealers and partners of Nessim Elnecavé
(father of Vitali Elnecavé).
Vitali arrived in England on May 5, 1910. He immediately launched a business with his brother Selemia Elnecavé at 70 Macfarlane Road, Shepherd’s Bush, London as dealers in carpets, embroideries, and antiques. This informal partnership allowed Vitali to hold shares in the Midland Counties Electric Supply Company starting in April 1928. In December 1924, Vitali became the tenant of Room 3, Walton House, 1 Newman Street in London, whence he and Selemia transferred their combined stock, which had been stored at their residence. Here again, although their financial interests were merged, they had no formal partnership agreement. The value of the business in 1927 was based on £3,306 in stock, £3,697 in sales, £937 gross profit, £651 net profit, and £527 in drawings. They paid an annual rent of £125. Vitali and his brother had no credit account since they purchased their stock with cash at auction sales, including Stubbs Commercial Agency, Sotheby’s Auction Rooms, Christie’s, the British Antique Dealers Association, and other well-known art and antique dealers.
From June 1911 until the time of his naturalization in 1929, Vitali was single. He and his brother Selemia lived at 70 Macfarlane Road with their sister, Rachel Cordova (née Elnecavé), whom they supported. Rachel was a Greek subject who was living apart from her husband Jerahmet (possibly Jerahmiel) Cordova. Vitali vacationed at Mesnil Val, Le Trepor, France from July 5 through September 3, 1914 and visited Belgium for a 3-month holiday.
Vitali’s life radically changed with the outbreak of World War I. Britain declared war on the Ottoman Empire on November 5, 1914. Four days later, Vitali registered with police as an Ottoman national. He had been initially exempted from internment during the war, but this status was reversed because he had refused to do work of national utility. Vitali was accordingly interned as an alien enemy from April 19 to November 25, 1918. In a letter of May 26, 1918, which the Home Office included in his naturalization file, Vitali contended that he had refused to do road making, since the work would be too difficult from him, but had offered to do farm work instead.
Vitali’s travel resumed after World War I. Between June 1920 and January 1924, he made about four visits to Paris and Antwerp for business, totaling one month. He spent a few days in Paris in September 1925 and visited again from December 22, 1925 to January 16, 1926; March and April 6-17, 1926; January 1927; and April 4-18, 1928. In Paris, he stayed with his two other sisters, Mrs. Victoria Chaki and Mrs. Laura Pardo Roques. He also took a business trip to the U.S. On one, dating from May 9, 1926 to December 18, 1926, he attended the Philadelphia Exhibition. This trip delayed consideration of his application, since he was unable to attend an interview with the Home Office, whose officials decided to postpone the processing by a year. On April 23, 1927, Vitale’s agents requested expedition of his application. On May 6, 1927, the Home Office responded by resolving to postpone consideration of his applications of both Vitali and Selemia for six months.
During the decade leading up to his British naturalization, Vitali apparently contemplated returning to his birthplace. In the 1920s, he renewed his Turkish identity papers several times. On February 26, 1924, and again on December 8, 1926 at the Turkish Consulate of New York, he was issued a certificate of Turkish nationality. On September 11, 1925, he obtained a Turkish passport, valid for one year, issued by the Turkish Consulate of London. Another passport was issued to him at the Turkish Consulate in New York on December 8, 1926, and was due to expire the following year. Vitali’s application to renew that passport was refused because, as the Turkish Consulate informed the Metropolitan Police, no passports were being issued in London to persons who left Turkey before 1923 and had not since returned to that country.[2] Vitali therefore obtained from the British Home Office a permit to allow him to travel to Paris. Previously, he had held a French passport issued in London on April 22, 1920, on which he was described as an “Israélite du Levant” and a “protégé Français.”
Vitali Elnecavé may have applied for British naturalization up to eleven times. By early 1925, he had hired the well-known London firm Mole & Ward, trained investigators who specialized in naturalization cases. This agency endeavored to convince the Home Office to consider together the applications of thirteen Ottoman Sephardi immigrants, including Vitali and his brother. All of these were “Spanish Jew cases” whom Mole & Ward identified as “members of the Spanish-Portuguese-Jewish fraternity in London.” Aside from the Elnecavé brothers, they were Joseph Souhami, Moise A. Alfandary, Simantov Morris Behar, Isidor R. Cohen [couldn’t find], Jack Cohen, Raphael L. Hassid, Isaac Maymon [Oriental goods dealer], Isaac Penso [don’t know], Victor V. Penso [don’t know], Albert Zara, and Robert J. Zara [briar root pipe manufacturer, son of carpet merchant]. Isidor R. Cohen, Isaac Penso, Victor V. Penso have not yet been identified, but all the others were in the carpet trade, aside from Isaac Maymon, who was an Oriental goods dealers, and Robert J. Zara, who was a pipe manufacturer and the son of a carpet merchant.
The agents related to the Home Office that during the latter part of World War I, all of the aforementioned men had been granted exemption from the disabilities placed upon Alien Enemies in the same way as Armenians, Syrians, Ottoman Greeks of the Christian faith, and other communities known to be opposed to the Ottoman Government. Mole & Ward argued that their clients fell under the exemption of the British Nationality and Status of Aliens Act 1918, Section 3 (2), as set out in Sub-section 2 (b) of that Section.[3] The agents further contended that the Elnecavé brothers and their friends had lived in the United Kingdom for periods varying from 15 to 25 years. While the brothers were bachelors, many of their friends were married with locally-born children. While the men were under the aegis of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews of London, they were about to build their own synagogue at Holland Park. Their language was “English, Spanish and Hebrew,” and the “Ottoman language” was never used by them and many of them had no knowledge of it at all. When the agents asked if the Home Office would consider the applications of Vitali and Selemia, they were assured that the Secretary of State would indeed do so provided that Mole & Ward submit from a Senior Minister of the community of Spanish and Portuguese Jews a statement of declaration to the effect that the brothers were members of a race or community opposed to the Ottoman government during the Great War.
The letter Senior Minister David Bueno de Mesquita wrote read like an abbreviated history lesson. He asserted that the gentlemen in question were “all descendants of Spanish or Portuguese Jewish families who were driven from the Spanish Peninsular at the time of the Inquisition and they settled in the Ottoman Empire.” He explained that “the Jews were expelled from Spain in the year 1492 and in 1656 they were granted, by Oliver Cromwell, permission to remain in London as a self contained [sic] community, and they have remained somewhat segregated form the other Jewish Communities since that date.” Bueno de Mesquita continued: “Their sympathies are not and never have been with the Turkish regime and during the latter part of the war they were granted exemption from the disabilities placed upon Alien Enemies in the same way as Armenians, Syrians, Ottoman Greeks of the Christian faith, and other communities known to be opposed to the Ottoman Government.”
On his Memorial for British citizenship (1925), Vitale Elnecavé identified as an “Ottoman (Spanish Jew).” He secured seven referees, including two Sephardi Jews. Abraham Benelisha, a “leading member of the London community of Spanish and Portuguese Jews,” was a goldsmith and silversmith born at Gibraltar on March 23, 1856. He was “on terms of social intimacy” with Vitali and had paid social visits to his home. Abraham Corré was a jeweler and diamond dealer who had maintained a social association with the applicant within the London community of Spanish and Portuguese Jews for the previous eighteen years as well as some business contact. Vitali’s brother Selemia had introduced Abraham to Vitali shortly after Vitali’s arrival in London. Additional referees included William Walter Adams, an antiques dealers agent with whom Vitali shared “social intimacy” and exchanged visits, and who had first met him fifteen years previously at sales and auction rooms; Dr. John Charles McCarroll, Vitali’s physician and surgeon for fourteen; William Jamieson, a tailor, who had serviced Vitali as a customer for over twelve years and with whom he socialized frequently, without paying home visits; George Frederick Rice, a sanitary engineer who also acted as a rent collector and small repairman in the house where Vitali’s brother Selemia had taken over the tenancy in 1911; and Francis Oliver Cole, a dealer in Oriental embroideries who had met Vitali through his brother fifteen years previously and with whom he had business transactions, but no social visits. Cole indicated that he continued to trade with the brothers in Oriental goods.
Vitali had planted deep roots in London. He had served as Honorary Secretary of the Spanish Portuguese Jewish Congregation of Shepherds Bush for fourteen years. He indicated that if his naturalization application proved successful, he would remain permanently in the United Kingdom and had already resided there continuously for the previous fifteen years. He had acquired “a great admiration for the British Constitution and British Customs” and “had never had any sympathy with the Ottoman Regime.” Vitali’s reference to constitutionalism is telling given the fact that the Ottoman Empire had a brief constitutional period from 1876 to 1878 under Sultan Abdul Hamid II, who then suspended Parliament and restored absolute rule in the chaos of the Russo-Turkish War. A second constitutional era, lasting from 1908 to 1922, was effectively annulled between 1913 and 1918 as a result of a military coup d’etat launched by the Committee of Union and Progress (اتحاد و ترقى جمعيتی).
Vitali had an “adequate knowledge” of English, being able to speak, read, and write it, and claimed to speak and read French and Spanish fluently, and to lesser extent German, Hebrew, and Turkish. The written portion of his dictation test displays beautiful cursive penmanship.
Vitali Elnecavé was naturalized in 1929. This file was originally closed until 2030 and declassified at my request on March 27, 2009.
[1] According to Vitali, his birthdate corresponded to 1306 of the “Turkish calendar” and 1308 according to the Arabic calendar. He indicated that before leaving for England, he had verified these dates from the “Jewish religious records” in Istanbul. His mother was also known as Junbul and Zumbul, or, according to the Turkish consulate, Zulbul Elnekave.
[2] Similar denaturalization was reported by Takouhi Pashaian of London (1888-1975).
[3] Mole & Ward to the Under Secretary of State, Home Office, February 24, 1925.