Just a quick post today…
Next week we are having the Marcus Segal letters digitised, which is very exciting as this means we can then use them in a variety of different ways.
We have had some really fantastic volunteers transcribing the letters but there are still a few remaining words which are proving difficult to decipher.
The letter extracts below have the transcribed words highlighted in yellow, if anyone could comment on here if they can work out what they say, this would be so helpful to us.
The letters below
Discoveries at the Jewish Military Museum 
Without being certain i venture to suggest the following:-
item 1- “Pimburg”
2 “and the salty cheese”
3 ?
4. Poor Arnold Cookman …. cheery how
5 82 conscientious objectors
6 minion or minyan (quorum for a Jewish service)
7 spiffing
8- ?
sincerely
Julian Pollard
Hi Julian, thank you so so much for these suggestions.I agree with Pimburg, minion and spiffing. We’ve worked out that the cheese is St Ivels! 82 conscientious objectors looks right, but did they get sent to France even though they were against the war?
tell Lucy these is not worth sending/
surname looks like Pinsbury but check on census.
thank you for your suggestions, we’re almost there!
I think it is ‘ripping’ rather than ‘spiffing’ – if you look at other examples of ‘r’, that is clearly the first letter.
Poor Arnold might be ‘Coopman’ rather than Cookman, as the shaft of the letter extends below the line and the the body of the letter is less rounded than his ‘k’.
Might the line from the 3rd letter read ‘and crowds of French rags and even Puppchen.’ (which was a piece of music by Jean Gilbert which came out in 1913).
thank you Sarah, especially for ‘Puppchen’, this was the word that none of us could work out. It seems correct in the context of the letter and the times.
Perhaps Violette Pimbury, 1893-1969?
Sarah. I have just picked this up. I remember the original article in the JC on the Marcus Segal letters back in 1996, the year after Hilda Segal died.
Hilda was my father’s aunt. She married Albert, Marcus’s brother in 1925 or 1926. My father was page boy at their wedding.
In 1942 my father joined Bomber Command and completed one tour of operations in 1944. I have a copy of his service record which names Hilda as his next of kin. The reason for this was that his mother died when he was very young and he was raised by Hilda’s parents in Cardiff.