Joe Coral

Coral was born as Joseph Kagarlitski in Warsaw, then part of the Pale of Settlement in the Russian Empire in 1904, to a Jewish family. Coral considered himself to be Russian, rather than Polish.

Following the death of this father, his mother brought the family to England in 1912, unable to speak any English. Believing that the surname would damage the chances of the family integrating, his mother chose the name 'Coral' as she was reading a book called The Coral Island at the time.

Coral contracted polio as a child, which left both his arms crippled.

He left school aged 14, and started as an office junior for a lamp manufacturer on Gray's Inn Road, London. He subsequently became a runner for a street bookmaker, which was illegal at the time. Using a float from money he was gifted at his bar mitzvah he started to directly take the bets himself, rather than run them to his employer, and was fired.

Coral married Dorothy Helen Precha in Edmonton, Middlesex on 25 July 1932, and received a caution for failing to declare the marriage to the authorities, as he was required to do as an alien.

In 1952, after living in the UK for forty years, Coral became a naturalised citizen, although his run-ins with authority nearly prevented it.

Coral died in 1996, shortly after his 92nd birthday.