The Brick Lane beigal shop!
From a Jack the Ripper site
AREAS OF SETTLEMENT
By the mid-nineteenth century, Anglo-Jewry had moved away from the original area of settlement in Aldgate and was to be found in Marble Arch, Canonbury, Dalston, and other havens of middle class tranquility.
The Aldgate area had become, as had the rest of the City, largely non-residential and filled with warehouses, offices and banks.
But, the district immediately east of Aldgate was about to become the Jewish area par excellence.
By 1914, 90 per cent of all Jews in England would live in the crowded streets and alleys of Whitechapel, Spitalfields and St George's in the East.
A ghetto was in formation.
Why did the refugees choose this area to settle in?
One reason was the presence of earlier poor Ashkenazi immigrants in the area; another was the existence of the soup kitchen.
THE POOR JEWS TEMPORARY SHELTER
Yet another was the existence from 1885 of the Poor Jews Temporary Shelter in Leman Street.
This institution was founded by Hermann Landau (1849-1921). An immigrant, having been born at Constantinov in Poland, he rose to become a Hebrew teacher and, later, a stockbroker.
Another attraction was the numerous chevrot (societies or clubs based on towns of origin) which existed to aid the newcomer.
WHY THE DISTRICT BECAME THE GHETTO
But two factors helped to determine that this district would become the ghetto.
Firstly, the majority of refugees arrived by steamer from Hamburg and these docked at Irongate Wharf by Tower Bridge (where the Tower Thistle Hotel now stands in St Katharine's Dock); it is a universal wisdom that immigrants first settle where they get off the ship.
Secondly, and most decisively, the East End in general was the least desirable part of town and, within the East End, the parishes of Spitalfields, Whitechapel and St George's were the least opulent of all. The immigrants had little choice but to settle here. They could not afford alternative accommodation, and would probably not be accepted as tenants elsewhere in the metropolis.
The Jewish communities which had arrived in earlier centuries were, or would become, middle class. But in the nineteenth century working-class Jews were arriving.
The earliest identifiable group of Jewish industrial workers were the Dutch Jews who settled in the Cobb Street, Leyden Street and Toynbee Street area of Spitalfields in the 1850s. It was among these workers, who were involved in the cigar and cigarette manufacturing industry, that the first strike of Jewish workers in England took place in 1858.
The East European refugees introduced three elements which had not hitherto been present to any extent in Anglo-Jewry: socialism, trade unionism and Zionism.
The Anglo-Jewish community had been very comfortable until the arrival of these strangers who dressed differently, spoke a foreign language (Yiddish) and carried their radical religious or political ideas with them.
They were not really welcome, but they were fellow Jews and so, initially, they had to be welcomed. But as early as 1882 the Board of Guardians of the Jewish Poor was taking advertising space in the Jewish press in Russia and Romania warning potential immigrants that if they came to England they would face great hardships and that the Board would give them no relief in the first six months of their residence.
The Board was swimming against the tide; the immigrants had faced a stark choice of choice life (if they left) or death (if they stayed). The hardships of England were as nothing compared to the hardships of home.
