Edmund Giraud

Edmund Giraud played for Syrna in the 1906 Olympic football tournament and won a silver medal. He was born in the Levant community at Smyrna (now Izmir) in what was the Ottoman Empire, now known as Turkey.

His brother Jim (Jacques) was also in the team, as were his six cousins Donald, Herbert, Albert, Godfrey and Edward Whitall, and Percy la Fontaine. Albert, Godfrey and Edward were also his brothers-in-law as Edmund married their sister Ruth – his first cousin.

Edmund was the general manager of the Oriental Carpet Company, the family business established in 1907 with one of his other brothers, Harold, being one of the co-founders. They exported Turkish carpets around the world.

A keen piano player, in the early 1950s he imported a large organ with 5,000 pipes from Germany. After his death it was donated to the Turkish Government and was eventually installed in the President’s Symphony Orchestra in Ankara.