Education

Chargois et Burluraux à Brighton

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I don’t know whether Pierre Chargois and Jean Nicolas Burluraux left Rupt-en-Woëvre in north-east France together in 1850, or even if they left at much the same time. They were both in their mid-twenties. Their small home town had a population of just 665. They may well have been related. The population was slowly declining and the two young men were part of that decline. The movement away from the countryside to the towns had begun. Pierre and Jean Nicolas had decided that they would go further than the nearest big town, Verdun.

Pierre’s father, Richard, was a merchant and had already crossed the Channel with his merchant father, Jean who was a frequent visitor to England. The two young men would sell high quality basket ware. It is likely that Jean Nicloas was a skilled basket weaver as one of the main crops in the very water-rich Rupt valley was osier or willow cane.

Osier Cutting by H. R. Robertson. Source: Life on the Upper Thames. Credit: the University of Toronto and the Internet Archive https://victorianweb.org/history/work/22.html

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Maurice Jacobs : Teacher and French Honorary Consul

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The 20th century had dawned just a few short years ago. Their son was a young teenager, so M. and Mme Léon, in Bordeaux, decided that it was high time for their lad, René, to perfect his English. The family was very internationally minded. They knew that Brighton already had an excellent reputation for good schools.  Its climate was healthy and its Jewish community was thriving.

prof-de-francais-1907

© Gallica : Bulletin de la Société de la Propagation des langues étrangères en France 1906

“Ah”, said M. Léon, “there is a school in Hove that would do very well.”  So he sent off a letter of enquiry to 14 Lansdowne Place in Hove.  Alas, it came to M. Léon’s ears that this school, run by a Frenchman and his English wife, was very, very small and that it had changed address several times over the previous few years. This did not bode well.  The Léons looked elsewhere.  Then they remembered that a few years previously, they had seen an advert in the “Jewish Chronicle” for a school in Brighton.  This looked more like what they wanted:

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