Sacha (Alexander) Foss b 5.9.1891 He was a powder-monkey to the revolutionaries in Latvia, as were many other boys at the school in their early teens. Sigi encouraged Sacha to leave home for England. He left Latvia and arrived in England in 1908/9. When the Voss to Foss name change occurred is not clear. One story is that on arrival was asked his name and the immigration officer wrote Foss rather than Voss. However, on his Marriage certificate, (1 June 1912), it is given as Voss, but on Arthur's birth certificate it is given as Foss. His name is also given as Foss in his US army paybook. In correspondence between himself and the US consulate in London in 1937, when he was applying for British citizenship, he as addressed as Alexander S. Voss or Foss. The confusion may come from the German custom of pronouncing V as F., or from different pronunciation of the Cyrillic ¥. It may be true that surnames were not regarded with the same importance in England by Jewish communities, who were accustomed to the whims of local authorities with regard to names and would in any case know everybody within the community. He initially worked in dry goods warehouse He married Maud Martin in 1912. At the outbreak of WW1, as the company handled imported goods,. His job came to an end. He volunteered to join the British army. A kindly elderly recruiting colonel told him that he could not join up 'for the special occasion' as he was an alien. He then set out to return to Russia to join up, but was told by the Russian consul in Oslo that his type was not wanted. He therefore continued to New York, gained employment there and in his spare time studied at Columbia University. He joined the US army, in the medical corps with other students, when the US entered the war, and was amongst the first to be sent to France. He left the UK before Arthur was born. He was temporarily adopted at the age of nine months by a Masonic couple, the Elwells – this was their war work – and lived happily with them until the end of the war, when in 1919, Sacha sent for them. Maud in the mean time had worked as a telephonist in the main post office buildings in Aldersgate Street. She had a general health breakdown as a result of the buildings taking a direct hit from a Zeppelin. During this time Arthur hardly knew his mother and met his father twice when he called in on the Elwells, when in the US army. Arthur and Maud travelled to New York in a US cruise through twelve days of storm, before their stay in Canada. At the end of 1919 Sacha was sent back to England to set up a merchant house, but this soon collapsed, with a subsequent tough time. In 1922, he was commissioned to go to Vienna to import footwear, made in Austria and Czechoslovakia, into England. The whole family lived there for short period in affluent circumstances, until he set up his own import agency with Gerald Barton (a cousin of a distinguished QC called Beyfus). This agency gradually went from strength to strength and enable him to send his sons to Merchant Taylor's and Arthur and Bill to Oxford. The outbreak of war brought the agency to an end. Instead he set up on his own as a sales agent for British footwear manufacturers, from which he did well. He also established a small chain of retail shops, mainly in Scotland and the north of England. He died in 1956, from hepatitis, aged 65. Maud lived on until 1963, dying at the age of 80. Maud Foss Maud Emily Dora Martin was the youngest of five children. Her father a Cornishman died young, leaving his wife more or less penniless. Maud was therefore brought up by her uncle, who had a C of E parish in Cardiff. A gentle parson, he was married to a fierce and childless spouse, who apparently resented being saddled with an orphan niece. Maud escaped to London, and undertook hospital work. It is believed that she met Sacha when living in Hampstead in the same digs. She was said to be always shy and retiring, but she did make some interesting friends, including the Bax family. The playwright Clifford Bax seemed to have liked her and Bill has a charming oil sketch of her by him. He mothers maiden name was Lamport, her forbears had founded the Lamport and Holt shipping line to trade with South America after the end of the Spanish ascendancy at the beginning of the nineteenth century. She lived in humble circumstances in Mare St., Hackney supported by Sacha. She died, suffering from some form of skin cancer, in her eighties. Little is known of Maud's four brothers , except that one was killed while riding a penny-farthing bicycle. They had three children – Arthur, Bill and Frank All three were educated at Merchant Taylor's school London.