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(The following information was originally supplied to Davnob, Vol. 2, Issue 2, Nov. 1988, by my uncle Lou and the full text can be found on his page.) My great-grandfather (Charlie and Lou's grandfather) was a cabinet-maker who emigrated to England from a small town near Odessa, Russia. His family names was Gantmacher or Goedmacher, but in order to facilitate his emigration he bought a passport in the name of Schachness, anglicized to Shotness. Shortly after settling in London, aghast at the working conditions and poor pay, he helped to found a trade union for cabinet makers, and was for a time its leader. Eventually he was ousted from leadership by younger members. His second daughter, Ray (yiddish name: Elcha Rasa), married my grandfather Solomon Noble. Solomon's family came from Kalisz, Moravia, a town on the borders of Poland and Germany where Gustav Mahler was also born. His mother's maiden name was Paradise (we think this may have had an Italian origin) and his father was Yechiel Leib Knobel. Solomon's elder brother, Martin Noble emigrated to New York and after Martin had settled there Solomon left Poland to join him but decided to break his journey in London to see his cousins, Michael Paradise and Abraham Paradise. He liked London and when he met my grandmother, Ray, he decided to stay and married her. And that is why my branch of the Nobles are Londoners and not New Yorkers. After the First World War, Grandpa Noble went back to Kalisz to see his mother (my great-grandmother). He found her in an old age home, frail and blind. She traced the contours of his face and assured him that she recognized him. My grandfather believed that she was about 100 when she died. Solomon and Ray had four sons, all born in London, of whom Charlie was the third - Lou and Ziggie were older, Bernie was younger. In the 1930s, the four brothers were involved in the Zionist movement in south London and it was here that Ziggie, Charlie and Bernie met the three Davidson sisters, Sophie, Edie (my mother) and Minnie and married them respectively - three brides for three brothers. Thus the Davidson clan married into the Noble clan to create the Davnobs, a close-knit family who started our own family magazine Davnob in the late 1950s. The latest version is now online.
 Solomon worked as a tailor in Soho, making uniforms for the Navy (Charlie has written vividly of his memories of this period which was just before the First World War), and later opened a fish and chip shop in Soho, with help from his four young sons. He then branched out into retailing with a newsagent/tobacconist in Battersea, selling everything from musical instruments, library books and 78s, to toys and clothes. Uncle Zig and Auntie Sophie continued to run the business (selling mainly "ladies' wear") in Battersea for many years. Uncle Bernie sadly died at an early age in the 1950s. The surviving Noble brothers all became clothes retailers, and my parents Charlie and Edie's children's-wear shop in Thornton Heath, two miles from where we lived in Norbury, supplied school uniforms for all the schools in Croydon. It wasn't what Charlie really would have wanted to do with his life. He had the mind to be an architect, craftsman, writer or art historian, and throughout the childhood of me and my sisters Susan and Judy, he had a vast number of hobbies. In 1996, at the age of 86 and 15 years after retiring, Charlie gained an A-level in Art - and he is still writing. You can read one of his short stories and reminiscences of his childhood in Charlie's page.
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