The Russian Tailor of Belfast

An immigrant story of survival in the era of Empires. In the midst of repressive laws of the Tsars against Jews, this seventeen-year-old loner, Philip Lepar Leopold, boarded a ship in Riga, Ukraine, Western Russia, sailing to the USA. Fate stepped in and when it docked in Hull harbour in the United Kingdom en route, he changed his mind as something convinced him to stay and take his chances. The timing was on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution and the explosion of large scale manufacture where he found his strength in the tailoring trade as a master pattern cutter. Business took him to Belfast and four years later it seems the grass was greener and he met and married his wife and reared their eight children on the Emerald Isle. As their family grew and their roots spread, challenges were made and met by all of them, some self-inflicted, although it was the influence of his character which left a lasting impression on his granddaughter Beryl whom as she approached her 90th year finally agreed with her daughter, his great granddaughter Geraldine, to tell it all along with a precious photographic collection of over one hundred images. This true story is told to the backdrop of battles for supremacy in brutal World Wars, civil and political unrest and the unending curse of religious division. Scenarios which persistently inflicted their reach into this family's life as they passionately fought for a living, success and peace, all in God's name.