After the Mourning
“Known as the West Ham cemetery, the site is enhanced by a large, round mausoleum that was built to take the body of a young woman called Evelina de Rothschild. Married to Ferdinand, of the famous banking family, poor Evelina died in childbirth in 1866 and was mourned by her husband for the rest of his life. The mausoleum is a testament to Ferdinand’s grief, which apparently turned the poor man into a recluse. It was a rather fitting place for a young and much-loved person like Alfie Rosen to be... interred.
There must have been hundreds of mourners. My lad Arthur, whose aunt Flo works in the heart of the Jewish East End at one of the sweat-shops on Fashion Street, reckoned that almost every tailor and seamstress in the area had downed tools to come out for Alfie Rosen. At half past three on a winter afternoon, with Jerries expected any minute, that was quite something.
Once I’d got Doris, her mum, her sisters and Herschel Rosen to the cemetery and lowered Alfie’s coffin into the hole, I stood with my lads by the Rothschild mausoleum.MoreLess
There must have been hundreds of mourners. My lad Arthur, whose aunt Flo works in the heart of the Jewish East End at one of the sweat-shops on Fashion Street, reckoned that almost every tailor and seamstress in the area had downed tools to come out for Alfie Rosen. At half past three on a winter afternoon, with Jerries expected any minute, that was quite something.
Once I’d got Doris, her mum, her sisters and Herschel Rosen to the cemetery and lowered Alfie’s coffin into the hole, I stood with my lads by the Rothschild mausoleum.MoreLess
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