The abdication crisis of 1936
The story of Wallis Simpson is well known, but it is Ernest Simpson where the interest arises.
While researching the extensive family history of my great-great-great-grandfather Samuel Moss Solomon, I stumbled upon an intriguing sequel to the scandal giving rise to the 1936 abdication of King Edward VIII.
The story of Wallis Simpson is well known. Born to a prominent Baltimore family in 1896, Wallis Warfield was briefly married to a US navy pilot, before marrying Ernest Simpson in 1928. Ernest Simpson was an Anglo-American shipping executive and former officer in the Coldstream Guards. It is Ernest Simpson where the interest arises.
The Harvard educated Simpson was born in 1897 the son of Ernest Louis Simpson, a London Jew who had changed his name from Solomon.
Wallis Simpson commenced an affair with the then Prince of Wales in 1934 which led to the cuckolded Ernest Simpson being divorced by Wallis on the grounds of his adultery with Mary Raffray, Wallis’ oldest friend who had introduced Wallis and Ernest to each other.
Ernest Simpson, forever known as the man who laid down his wife for his country, thereafter married Mary and together they had a son, Ernest Henry Child Simpson born in 1939 and baptised in the Guards Chapel, Wellington Barracks, London.
Ernest Henry Child Simpson was educated at Harrow and commissioned in the Coldstream Guards before serving in the British Army. Exhibiting a degree of rebelliousness that would be welcomed by today’s parents he changed his name to Ahron Solomons and in 1962 he emigrated to Israel joining the Israeli Army and seeing action in the Six-Day War in 1967 and in the Yom Kippur War in the Golan Heights in 1973.
Solomons married twice having three Israeli sons, Uri (b 1964), Nadav (b 1964) and Ze’ev (b 1968). He continues to reside in Eilat where he has pursued a lifelong career as a professional free-diving instructor.
This account is of especial interest following the recent publication of Tea with Hitler by Dean Palmer detailing the extensive relationship between the Duke and Duchess with Hitler, von Ribbentrop and the Nazi hierarchy.
Gavin Silbert QC is president of the Australian Jewish Historical Society, Victorian branch.
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