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Obituaries

Obituary: Godfrey Simmons

Local historian who brought industry to Cornwall and Devon

November 2, 2017 12:38
Godfrey Simmons
1 min read

With a family dynasty dating back to the 18th and 19th centuries, when the Simmons family were major contributors to Cornish Jewish life, Godfrey Simmons, who has died aged 98, spent many years researching the history of Cornish Jews and his own family history.

He was the great-grandson of Rabbi Barnet (Issachar ben Asher) Simmons (1784-1860) of Penzance, also the county’s mohel, and grandson of Simon Barnet Simmons who was born in Penzance in 1834.

Godfrey Simmons himself was born in Birmingham to Bernard and Hannah (née Selig) Simmons, the youngest of three children, after Ruth and John. He attended Birmingham’s King Edward’s School, followed by a career in manufacturing, where he progressed to senior sales positions, including as sales director at manufacturing companies in the Midlands. His work at times involved regular overseas trips, several times to Sweden, at least once to the USA and Tehran. He married Winifred Nathan (also descended from Cornish Jews) in 1953 and they had two children, Bernard, born in 1954, and Joanna, born in 1956.

It was on semi-retirement in 1979, that he and Winifred moved to Cornwall, and he set up on his own as a manufacturers’ agent, representing companies who had no previous presence in Cornwall and Devon,