Nat Shaw - the Waterloo Cup and Ipswich Town Football Club
Mavis Sotnick writes a letter about her father Nat Shaw who made a significant mark in the sporting world as well as founded several Jewish settlements in East Anglia.
I have just received an email from my cousin Monica Bogen ...Yes, my father was on the Board of Ipswich Town Football Club, in fact he helped to establish the team and was on the first Board. I remember as a little girl going to the games and sitting in the box. I also remember when we won the FA Cup, Daddy was not alive to see it, but I went back to my home town to see the Team bring the Cup back to Ipswich, such an exciting time.
My father was a very unusual Jewish man, and I am not sure where he got all his ambitions from. Brought up in the East End of London to a very poor family, he and my mother decided to open a dress shop in East Anglia. Their destination was Norwich. But the train stopped at Ipswich and he saw they did not have a dress shop so they opened one there, in fact my mother had four at one time. He gradually bought his brothers into the area. Monica's mother was his sister and she had a dress shop in Bury St. Edmunds, then another brother in Petersborough and the other Brother in Boston. All did very well.
Daddy did have a Greyhound Track, in fact he bred Greyhounds. In the 1930's they had coursing, where the dogs run after a live hare. This was a sport for gentlemen, however one of the owner's dog had an accident, and he heard that my father had a very good dog called Genial Nobleman. He contacted my father and ran the dog at the Waterloo Cup, which went on for three days, and my father's dog won the cup. This was such a rare thing for a Jewish Man, because you are talking about this being the Sport of the Upper Class. My father went on to win the Cup in his own right with Noted Sunlight. He won many trophies and all the dogs had names beginning with N S for Nat Shaw.
I will be in touch again, and I should like to hear from you.
I also have stories about the Jewish people in Bury St. Edmunds making a Sedar for 500 Jewish American boys, my sister married one, and this is how I came with my family to live in Evanston, which is a suburb of Chicago.
Sincerely,
Mavis Sotnick
