image courtesy of Jinny Reinhard
Sykes home in Turkey, probably Bornova - Eric Whittall house (information courtesy of Mark Giraud).
image courtesy of Jinny Reinhard
Close-up of the persons
image courtesy of Jinny Reinhard
The Sykes home in Turkey
image courtesy of Jinny Reinhard
Close-up of this image
image courtesy of Jinny Reinhard
Jane Sykes (my grandmother often known as Jenny) and her eldest daughter Irene born in Huddersfield,Yorkshire, England in 1897, photographed in Istanbul.
image courtesy of Jinny Reinhard
The reverse of above photo sent as a postcard by the sister of Jane, Jenny Sykes.
image courtesy of Jinny Reinhard
The Sykes in 1921, possibly photographed in Bornova, Smyrna. My grandfather, William Norman, second daughter Muriel on the right (unmarried), third daughter Dorothy who died on board ship and was buried in Malta, and my father William Norman Sykes. The children were not born in Smyrna but in Panderma now Bandıma [archive views]. From this I can only assume my Grandfather ran the raw material production side of the OCM Carpet production cartel in this city - view images of the works. The family spoke little of their time in Turkey or their departure: I can imagine these ships crammed with refugees leaving Smyrna with all those traumatized families aboard. I do not know where my grandmother is likely to have been buried and she died around this 1922 period. Panderma was mostly destroyed by the Greek forces during the 1919-22 war and I imagine the wool mill building is no longer standing.
image courtesy of Jinny Reinhard
The first person to go to Turkey was my great uncle Joe Armitage Sykes O.B.E. Above is an interesting article which I think was written in 1966, 50 years after the fall of Kut, but I can’t be sure. This is literally all I have on the family and I seem to know more about my great uncle than I do my grandfather!!
Since posting the material here in early 2012, more information has to come to light by researchers and Levantine descendants. Now I know Joe Sykes was in partnership with the Smyrna based businessman Harold Giraud. I also found that my Grandmother made it safely back to England with her family in 1922 and lived there until she became ill and died in 1929.