Letters

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I have been looking for years to find what happened to my Baghdadian ancestors and wonder if any readers can help. My great grandfather was David Michael. He had a brother, Joseph Rahamin Michael. They were both born in Baghdad in the second half of the nineteenth century.
David Michael had four sons and a daughter: Albert, Sassoon Hay (1877-1963), Solomon (Sidney, 1880-1966) and the daughters Toffaha. As far as I know, all these were born in Baghdad.
Sassoon Hay Michael married Lulu Badnani (changed to Baring) in Manchester, 1918. Solomon (Sidney) Michael, my grandfather, married Moselle Marcus in 1912 in Singapore. Joseph Rahamin Michael was educated in India, at the David Sassoon School and Elphinstone High School, and when at the age of fifteen, David Sassoon & Co. were needing clerks to send to their house in China, and although he was anxious to continue his studies he was taken to the Bombay office, where he was apprenticed for six months, and was then sent with S.J. Solomon, who was about 24 years of age, to Calcutta, where they stayed a week, and was then sent out to the Sassons' Shanghai office.
He left Sassoons in 1888 and set up on his own. Business prospered, and he took on his two nephews, Solomon (Sidney) Michael and Sassoon Hay Michael, and also one Mr R A Gubbay. He later established an office in Hong Kong, and emigrated to London in the first part of the twentieth century, together with Solomon (Sidney).
All that is known of Albert Michael is that he went to South Africa.
Toffaha apparently went to Israel.
I should very much like to know the ancestry of this family in Baghdad, and should be most grateful if anyone can help.

With many thanks

Nicholas Michael
Neon, Switzerland

Scribe:
Joseph Rahamin belonged to a well known Gubby family that occupied important positions within the Iraqi Jewish community.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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