Nearing the end of the Political Road...1950

Mr Austin adopted as candidate; Pledges devotion to Socialist Creed.

Lew Austin, Amatuer Artist

Montego Bay, Jamaica early 1950's Lewis Austin

Spot Valley, Jamaica early 1950's Lewis Austin

Lew Austin M.P.

Herschel Lewis Austin M.P. for Stretford and Urmston, Manchester U.K. shaking hands with prospective Conservative opposition candidate Samuel Storey, 3rd December 1948.

Also Lew, as he was known with his agent, Mr B.C.L. Garrington, 3rd February 1950.

Obituary of Frank Austin

Born London, January 26 1906, Died London 8th August, 1996, aged 90.
Frank Austin, founder-chairman of a successful furniture company was a poor London boy who made good and spent his life working for the good of young people. He never forgot what it was like to be picked out at school because he wore charity clothing. Shrewd and kindly, he was a mainstay of Brady Boys’ Club and the Children’s Country Holiday Fund. The third of seven children who were bought up in the East End, he was only eight when his Polish-born father died but his father had already charged him with responsibility for the family.
Frank joined the Brady club - which had had been founded in 1896 – gaining enormously from its sporting, educational and recreational facilities, aswell as from its meals and showers. He was always conscious of his debt to the club, which he supported through many later crises. When he left the Jews’ Free School at 14 for a four-year apprenticeship in cabinet-making, Mr Austin started up in a Shoreditch workshop business with his four brothers.
The business eventually moved to Leyton, East London, embracing new factory methods of furniture manufacture. After the war, its brandname, Austinsuite, became a household name. With a reputation for being a progressive employer, he became master of the Furniture Makers’ Company in 1974-75 and president of the National Trades’ Benevolent Association.
On the communal front, he was member of the Board of Deputies and spoke out against Oswald Mosely’s blackshirt Fascists in Hyde Park in the 1930s.
As chairman of Brady from 1941, he helped purchase Skeet Hill House in Kent in 1945, to provide country weekends in the fresh air for inner city children. In 1967, he helped to save the club from closure through lack of funds. He was appointed O.B.E. for his social work in 1968. When he stepped down at the end of 1971, becoming life president, the club put on a variety show in his honour and a hall was named after him. The event was attended by Labour ministers Arthur Bottomley and George Brown, who unveiled a plaque in the hall. It was an apposite tribute for a lifelong Labour Party supporter and staunch trade unionist.
Mr Austin’s concern for children was evidenced by his presidency of the Jewish branch of the Children’s Country Holiday Fund, which into the 1970’s provided an annual seaside break for 150 children. When the United Nations “year of the child” was announced for 1979, he chaired the Anglo-Jewish co-ordinating committee. For him, this was a welcome opportunity to bring children’s problems to the forefront of public attention.
The same concerns attracted him to becoming a J.P. (Justice of the Peace) in 1951, sitting on the juvenile court in Stratford. He then went on to the bench in the City of London, and was the first chair-man of the Waltham Forest magistrates’ court until he retired in 1976.
Ever energetic, he loved sport and later took up dairy farming. As the farm was near Glyndebourne, he combined this hobby with a love of opera. In his youth, he sang in an amateur chorus in Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Yeomen of the Guard”. His future wife, Jeanne, sang the lead role. She died in 1995.
He is survived by a son, two daughters, grandchildren and great-grandchilden.

Austin Factory Works Lunch

A photo most likely to have been taken in the 1940's at the factory of F Austin (Leyton) Ltd, on Argall Avenue, East London. Seated at the back are the four Austin brothers, who all were company directors. Circled in green is Frank Austin the company's founder, to his left (the viewers right)and circled in red is is his youngest brother Herschel Lewis Austin, the production manager, known as "Mr Lew". The other two brothers are most likely to be Samuel, transport manger and Nathaniel, who are to the right of Frank (our left). Harry, the oldest of the brothers was not employed at the firm. he had emigrarted to Austrailia around 1922, but later returned to England, running a chain of shoe shops in Oxford.

Austin Furniture

An advert from "Flight" featuring the Austin furniture business from 1941, when the company was manufacturing military aircraft including the de Havilland Mosquito, as part of the "The War Effort". The company would later go on to produce a range of furniture, known as "Austinsuite", which would become a household name.

Lew Austin was production manager. On one occasion Lord Beaverbrook, the Canadian newspaper entrepreneur who was Minister of Aircraft Production in Churchill's war Ministry, visited the factory and was shown round by "Mr Lew". After the visit one of the men's toilets had two articles graffiti on the wall. The first read "Lord Beaverbrook is a c**t" The second read "No I'm not".

Deborah Ornstein (Nee Moser)

This is Deborah / Dvorah or "Dobbie" Ornstein, later Austin who was the daughter of Yiddel and Hannah Moser, of Jagielnica. She is my maternal great grandmother, and was the mother of Leah, Frank, Harry, Nathaniel, Samuel, Herschel Lewis (my maternal Grandfather)and Kitty. This picture was probably taken in the early 1950's.