recipe book conclusion the best course of action would be for her to go to the Constance Spry Cordon Bleu School at Winkfield Place which offered a combined Cordon Bleu and Secretarial course. It also taught the girls to prepare for married life by teaching them how to make curtains, lampshades and cushions and most importantly how to iron. In four terms a school girl would be prepared for marriage. It was the 1970’s equivalent of a finishing school. Her parents loved the sea and always owned a boat. This love was transmitted to Nhean and she became a keen fisherwoman enjoying the excitement of mackerel fishing and the long hours involved in finding shark. Aged 19, Nhean moved to London, joined forces with her two eldest brothers in a flat in Roland Gardens, Kensington and managed to juggle life as a secretary with cooking for private dinner parties. Soon she found a job in London with an offshore oil company which lasted for five years. Promotion was swift and eventually she found herself virtually running the company. Once again she was ahead of the current trend by working until the day before the birth of her first daughter. After the birth of her second daughter she returned to live on the Rock and began to work as a professional chef, cooking the monthly lunch for the board of directors of Hambros Bank. This job lasted for 12 years and needless to say the menu was different each month. She would arrange the menu, buy the ingredients, cook the food, ar-
Nheam’s mother, Tin Russo, with her mother Margot Imossi, grandmother Pepita Canepa and great grandmother Victorine Saccone, 1931 and Elba the Great Dane
range the table, serve the lunch and then wash up. She was the queen of all she surveyed in the Hambros kitchen and directors’ dining room. She also cooked for several shoots across the border and her next book is going to be
about shooting in Andalucia and the food that is eaten on them. Now she cooks every day but her professional output is confined to the shoots. She continues to experiment in the kitch- ➥
Jerome Saccone’s legacy The Saccone & Speed (Gibraltar) Group of Companies can trace its roots to 1839, when James Speed started trading in Gibraltar as a wine merchant. By 1850 Jerome Saccone had also established his own wines and spirits business. The two wine companies competed with each other for the remainder of the century, and by 1908 the two rivals merged and incorporated in England as Jerome Saccone & James Speed & Co. Limited. In 1912 the company name was changed to Saccone & Speed Limited and when the Gibraltar Companies Ordinance permitted, Saccone & Speed Limited was incorporated in Gibraltar in 1949. As well as a wine merchant Jerome was a successful banker and after his death in 1877 the banking side of the business was run by two of his sons-in-law Albert Porral and Joseph Patron. They developed the relationship with the Anglo Egyptian Bank which eventually became Barclays Bank DCO. This gave the Saccone business GIBRALTAR MAGAZINE • APRIL 2012
virtual unlimited long term credit facilities. They also had the foresight to merge in 1908 the competing wine businesses of their late father in law with that of James Speed which resulted in the hugely successful Saccone and Speed. Above all else, Jerome was a hard headed businessman and his will, written a few months before his death, lists in detail the substantial sums owed to him by three of his sons-in-law. The will excused the interest due but insisted on the loans being repaid to his estate. Jerome Saccone was born in
Genoa in 1827 and moved to Gibraltar in the late 1830s to make his fortune. On the Rock he met the beautiful Frenchwoman Josephine Langlais, married her and they produced seven daughters. He died in 1877.
by the daughters marrying three Gibraltarians, an Italian, a Scotsman, an Englishman and a Spaniard. Today there are branches of the family in Gibraltar, England, Spain, Madeira, Ireland and Argentina.
The disappointment in not having a son and heir was mitigated
The daughters were Emilia, Ernestine, Mary, Elena, Victoria,➥
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