Brian Epstein - Family and Early Life

Family and Early Life

Epstein's family were Jewish; his grandfather, Isaac Epstein, was from Lithuania (then part of the Russian Empire), and arrived in England in the 1890s, at the age of eighteen. His grandmother, Dinah, was the daughter of Joseph (a draper), and Esther Hyman, who had emigrated from Russia to England (c. 1871/72), with their eldest son, Jacob. The Hymans had six more children.

Isaac Epstein married Dinah Hyman in Manchester in 1900. In 1901, Isaac and Dinah were living at 80 Walton Road, Liverpool, with Isaac's sister, Rachael Epstein, above the furniture dealership he had recently founded. Dinah and Isaac's third son was Harry Epstein; the father of Brian Epstein. Eventually the family moved to a larger home at 27 Anfield Road, Liverpool (now a Beatles-themed hotel called Epstein House). After Harry and his brother Leslie had joined the family firm, Isaac Epstein founded "I. Epstein and Sons", and enlarged his furniture business by taking over adjacent shops, at 62/72 Walton Road, to sell a range of other goods such as musical instruments and household appliances. They called the expanding business NEMS (North End Music Stores), which offered lenient credit terms, and from which McCartney's father once bought a piano.

Epstein's mother was formally named Malka (although always known by her family as Queenie, Malka translating as "queen" in Hebrew), and was a member of the Hyman furniture family, which owned the successful Sheffield Veneering Company.

Epstein was born on 19 September 1934, in Rodney Street, Liverpool. Harry and Queenie also had another son, Clive, who was born 22 months after his older brother. During World War II, the Epsteins moved to Southport—where two schools expelled Epstein for laziness and poor performance—but returned to Liverpool in 1945. The Epsteins lived at 197 Queens Drive, Childwall, in Liverpool, living there for 30 years.

After his parents had moved him from one boarding school to another, including Clayesmore School in Dorset, the 14-year-old Epstein spent two years at Wrekin College in Shropshire, where he was taught the violin. Shortly before his 16th birthday, he sent a long letter to his father, explaining that he wanted to become a dress designer, but Harry Epstein was adamantly opposed to the idea, and his son finally had to "report for duty" at the family's furniture shop. After serving an apprenticeship for six months for another company, he started work for his family's business on a £5 per week wage, and was congratulated on his first day of work for selling a £12 dining room table to a woman who had originally wanted to buy a mirror.

In December 1952, Epstein was drafted as a data entry clerk into the Royal Army Service Corps, and was posted to the Albany Street Barracks near Regent's Park in London, where he was often reprimanded for not picking up his army pay. After returning to Liverpool, he was put in charge of the Clarendon Furnishing shop in Hoylake, and in 1955 was made a director of NEMS. In September 1956, he took a trip to London to meet a friend, but after being there for only one day, he was robbed of his passport, birth certificate, chequebook, wristwatch, and all the money he had on him. As he did not want his parents to find out, he worked as a department store clerk until he had earned enough money to buy a train ticket back to Liverpool. Back in Liverpool, he confessed his homosexuality to a psychiatrist—a friend of the Epstein family—who suggested to Harry Epstein that his son should leave Liverpool as soon as possible. During the sessions Epstein revealed his ambition of becoming an actor, so his parents allowed him go to London to study.

After saying the he "felt like an old man at the age of 21", Epstein attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), in London. His RADA classmates included actors Susannah York, Albert Finney and Peter O'Toole, but Epstein dropped out after the third term, saying that he had become "too much of a businessman to enjoy being a student, and I didn't like being a student at all." In 1964, he revealed that he would have liked to produce a theatre play, or even act, "in something by Chekhov", or a "straight drama" by John Osborne.

Back in Liverpool, his father put his son in charge of the record department of the family´s newly-opened NEMS music store on Great Charlotte Street. Epstein worked "day and night" at the store to make it a success, and it became one of the biggest musical retail outlets in the North of England. The Epsteins opened a second store at 12–14 Whitechapel, and Epstein was put in charge of the entire operation. He often walked across the road to the Lewis's department store (which also had a music section), where Peter Brown was employed. He watched Brown's sales technique and was impressed enough to lure Brown to work for NEMS with the offer of a higher salary and a commission on sales.