The Rise of Jewish Suburbia

<plain_text><page sequence="1">The Rise of Jewish Suburbia VIVIAN D. LIPMAN, M.A., D.Phil. 'Saul Myers begs to inform the gentlemen of the Jewish persuasion that his spacious Dining Rooms are now open for their reception; and he trusts by strict attention to business to ensure their patronage. The Rooms will be open on the Sabbath only to those members of the faith who have ordered dinners on or before the preceding Friday. 17 Cornhill, opposite the Royal Exchange.' This notice appeared in the Voice of Jacob on 7 July 1843.1 It is of significance as testifying to the development in London of a commuter class of Jewish businessmen who had settled in the suburbs but travelled daily into the City to work and insisted on observance of the dietary laws. It is clear that Mr. Myers looked to this class for his main clientele, although he did offer to cater for visitors on Sabbaths and Holy Days (something our contemporaries have so far failed to achieve), and he subsequently offered tinned mock turtle soup for those travelling abroad.2 The establishment of such an eating-house had been advocated in a letter to the Voice of Jacob on 17 March 1843 by a gentleman signing himself (in Hebrew) 'Kashruth'. He stated that he resided in one of the suburbs of London and arrived in the City between 9 and 10 in the morning. His business kept him in the neigh? bourhood of the Bank always until 5 and some? times until 7 p.m., during which time 'I am compelled to stay the cravings of my hunger with some poor substitute for the substantial food which my constitution requires'. He added that while a Jewish eating-house in the City had not succeeded in 1830, the prospects of success in 1843 were much surer because a greater number of Jewish families now lived out of the City and a greater number of the wealthier Jews were disposed to abstain from forbidden food.3 We cannot date a significant development in Anglo-Jewish social history solely on the evidence of an eating-house; but this story does suggest that we should look in the period of the 1830s or early 1840s for other evidence on the movement of middle-class Jewish families out of the City of London and its adjacent streets to the more spacious areas of the suburbs. To find the beginnings of this movement is not merely of antiquarian interest. For the sub? urban Jewish community has been of great sociological importance in determining the character of Anglo-Jewry; and some of the features which distinguish Anglo-Jewry can be traced to these suburban communities. In an age when the Jews of the Hampstead Garden Suburb, or of Edgware, or of Ilford, and no longer the Jews of the East End, tend to set the pattern for the Anglo-Jewish community as a whole, it is strange that the origins and early development of suburban Jewish communities have been so neglected. Jewish social history has been so dominated by study of the 'ghetto', the area which the American Jewish socio? logists have termed the area of first settlement, that the length of history of Jewish suburbia tends to be underestimated.4 THE NATURE OF THE SUBURB But before embarking on an inquiry into the history of Jewish suburbia, I wish to make four definitions or reservations. First, I have defined the Jewish suburban community in terms of the commuter, the man who lives in the suburb and travels daily to work, usually in the centre of the conurbation or an area adjacent thereto. To take a concrete example, I have not in? cluded as a suburban community for the pur? pose of this study the congregations of the Western Synagogue or of Maiden Lane in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries, since their members settled in what was then the western side of London in order to earn their living in the vicinity; nor, to take a later example, do I regard as suburban the Jewish community of Soho, described by Mr. Ghaim Lewis in his recent volume of autobiography, A Soho Address, even though it was historically 78</page><page sequence="2">The Rise of Jewish Suburbia 79 largely an overspill from East London. Second, I use the term 'suburb' in the English rather than the contemporary American sense. 'In essence a suburb is a decentralized part of a city with which it is inseparably linked by certain economic and social ties.'5 The suburb is therefore part of the city, within the built-up area of the conurbation, whereas 'in the United States the word "suburban" connotes something different from the common European meaning. It refers directly to areas outside a city; it tends, therefore, to describe development of the recent past?since 1945: development based on the universal possession of the private automobile; development at a density which is extraordinarily low even by generous European standards'.6 Third, my illustrations of the growth of suburbia are drawn exclusively from London. The development began much earlier there, the geographical spread is far greater, but the process was basically the same in the provincial cities as in London. Jewish experience, which in London was spread over many areas?Whitechapel, Hack? ney, Stamford Hill, Hampstead, Golders Green, and Edgware?was in Manchester and Salford compressed geographically into a stretch of about four miles along the road to Bury?from Cheetham Hill to Whitefield; or in Leeds along just over four miles of the road leading to Harrogate, from the Leylands to Alwoodley. Fourth, some explanation, however general, is needed of the sense in which I shall be using the terms middle class and upper or upper middle class. I have taken the keeping of at least one servant as the criterion of middle-class status, following the test adopted by Charles Booth in his great survey of London Life and Labour at the end of the nineteenth century. Again following Booth, I have used the term upper or upper middle class to cover those keeping three or more servants per family. In the Booth Survey study of social and religious influences all the streets of London are classified according to class. My ordinary middle class corresponds roughly to the areas marked in red on Booth's map, 'well-to-do'; the upper or upper middle class to the areas marked yellow, 'wealthy'. Levels of income, of course, fluctu ated greatly during the period covered but, at a very rough estimate, the minimum income for middle-class status would be about ?100 per year, with an upper or upper middle class income beginning at about ?1,000 a year. To some extent, there would have been over? lapping of the lower ranges of the middle class by the higher grades of working class or artisans, who towards the end of the nineteenth century might earn up to 45s. or 50s. a week; these would occupy houses in areas coloured pink on the Booth maps, 'working-class com? fort'.7 Mrs. Beeton in 1861 suggests that a widow or spinster with ?100 per annum would have one servant; a family with ?150 to ?300 per annum one whole-time cook-general; a family with ?500 per annum a cook and a maid; with ?750 a cook, a maid, and a boy; and with ?1,000 a year a cook, two maids, and a man.8 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY While the development of London Jewish suburbia dates from the 1830s or 1840s, there had, of course, been London Jews with resi? dences in the suburbs of the Metropolis, or outlying villages, in the eighteenth century. Yet examination of the circumstances of these earlier settlers confirms the thesis that they were not middle-class commuters as in the nineteenth century. This settlement took three forms. First, Jews had country houses in the area round London; second, they would buy or rent houses in residential villages, such as Richmond; third, they would occupy houses in villages which were already virtually part of the London conurbation, such as Hackney or Canonbury. In so far as the wealthiest Jews acquired country houses within easy reach of London, they were only doing what their Christian contemporaries were doing from the beginning of the eighteenth century onwards. As Defoe wrote in 1724: T find two thousand houses which in other places would pass for palaces, and most, if not all, the possessors whereof keep coaches, in the little towns or villages of Middlesex, west of London only.' These were the wealthier London merchants and bankers, who cut up the area round London</page><page sequence="3">80 Vivian D. Lipman in residential properties. 'An age began of good, solid mansions of London brick, square, com? fortable, without much ornament; they may still be seen in many parts of Middlesex especially along the river. Many of them are now in reduced circumstances, though it is still possible to detect the air of amiable, unexciting spaciousness they once possessed.'9 In so far as one can find any tendency to cluster in Jewish settlement, it seems to be in the popular south-western sector?Richmond, Isle worth, Teddington, Mortlake, Twickenham.10 Jews had settled in Richmond from the end of the seventeenth century; Moses Hart moved from Richmond to a country house at Isle worth, and the Franks family also had country homes in this area on the Middlesex side.11 The Goldsmids preferred the south?Benjamin at Roehampton, Abraham at Morden. It was of this area that Cobbett wrote ill-naturedly some years later that from Sutton to London 'there is, in fact, little besides houses, gardens, grass plots and other matters to accommodate the Jews and jobbers and the mistresses and bastards that are put out a-keeping'.12 There were also a number of Jews in the area north? west of London: Aaron Gapadose and Jacob Pereira at Stanmore, Joseph da Costa at Totteridge, Joseph d'Almeida at Watford, the Mendes da Costas at Highgate. Indeed, Defoe wrote that 'Jews have particularly fix't on Highgate and Hampstead for their country houses'. In the north-east, Jacob Fernandez Nunes had a house at Stoke Newington and Benjamin Goldsmid had his first country residence at Stamford Hill, while keeping his London home in Spital Square. The Assur Key sers, with a house in Finsbury Square, had also a country home at Chestnut Walk, Leyton.13 When these wealthy Jewish businessmen took a country house or, on a less grand scale, a house in Richmond or Hampstead or Highgate, they would normally use them as weekend or summer residences only, while keeping a house in town. It was rather like a modern business man having a country cottage or a flat in a seaside town to retire to at weekends. Moses Hart, of Isleworth, kept his house in St. Mary Axe; Aaron Franks, of Isleworth, had a house in Billiter Square; Moses Isaac Levy (President of the Board of Deputies in 1789) had a house in London, as well as a country home in Wimbledon. Benjamin Goldsmid had his London home in Spital Square, Assur Keyser in Finsbury Square. If a Jew settled in a village near London but did not keep a London home, it was likely that he had retired from business. The 'first Jew in Hampstead', Eliezer Isaac Keyser, who settled there in about 1812, did so because he was retired from business.14 Others in the mid-eighteenth century (e.g., Abraham de Paiba, who spent nearly the last ten years of his life in Richmond) were retired from daily attendance at business in the City. Neither the wealthy, who kept houses for weekend or summer residence, nor the retired could be regarded as ordinary commuters. On the other hand, those Jews who from the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century lived in areas as close to the Metropolis as Islington or Hackney were probably within such close reach of the City?about a mile and a half? that they were in fact commuters and seem to have had no other residence. Islington had several Jewish residents in the late eighteenth century.15 Solomon Cohen, a son of Levi Barent Cohen (and brother-in-law of Moses Montefiore), took a house in Canonbury about 1820 (Grove House, near Canonbury Tower); there is no evidence that he kept another house in the City.16 Islington in 1815 was, according to a contemporary, ?a colony of bankers and mer? chants' clerks', because it was within a mile and a half of the centre of the City.17 Similarly, Hackney had a considerable number of Jewish residents even before 1800.18 This was only to be expected since, as Maitland put it in 1753, it was the nearest place in which a man could live and work in London. THE SPREAD OF LONDON JEWRY 1830-1840 Yet while we can find in the Islington and Hackney settlements rudimentary groups of Jewish suburban commuters, they were very small indeed compared with the movement which began around 1830. It is remarkable indeed that the very wealthiest Jews did not</page><page sequence="4">The Rise of Jewish Suburbia 81 move out before about 1830. While the streets and squares of Marylebone, Mayfair, and St. James's had been the fashionable areas of residence for the wealthy from the beginning of the eighteenth century, hardly any of the Jewish magnates, even those with their own country houses, acquired town houses in the West End but kept their London homes in the City or the streets to the east. It was not till 1825 that Nathan Mayer Rothschild moved from New Court to 107 Piccadilly and Moses Montefiore to Green Street, Park Lane.19 Isaac Lyon Goldsmid left Spital Square at about the same time for Regent's Park.20 On the other hand, Joseph Cohen, a brother in-law of N. M. Rothschild and a brother of the Solomon Cohen of Canonbury, lived till his death in 1838 in Prescott Street. The tendency to move from the City spread to the rest of the upper middle class and to some of the ordinary middle class in the 1830s and early 1840s. These, however, usually moved a smaller distance than the Rothschilds or Montefiores had done. They went to the Finsbury Square area, to Bloomsbury or Marylebone, rather than to Mayfair. We can date this move fairly closely by examining the addresses in a series of contemporary lists. For instance, a list of 1827, giving the addresses of subscribers to the Jewish Blind Society, shows practically no addresses at all outside the City or East London; in 1836 a list of 104 subscribers to a book of Jewish interest shows over a third outside the City and streets adjacent; and analysis of 100 Jewish names in the 1848 Post Office Court Directory suggests that only about 12% of those named in the list still lived in the City or the eastern streets, although this list represents a rather higher social stratum than the 1827 and 1836 lists. Bearing in mind that probably at least two-thirds of London's Jewish population of around 18,000 at this period still lived in the City and the streets to the east, there appears nevertheless a remarkable tendency on the part of the Jewish middle class to move. What were the reasons for this migration? One can attribute it to the desire of the largely English-born Jewish middle class to assimilate to their environment?a tendency which was also reflected in this period in the struggle for political emancipation. On the other hand, if we accept that this was an assimilatory ten? dency, we must look also for the reasons which led to migration in the wider community. The movement of middle-class Jews into the suburbs was only part of a great movement that not only transformed London in the nineteenth century but introduced into the social structure a new class?the suburbans. The population of London in the nineteenth century rose from just over a million to 6-5 millions.21 Because in England develop? ment tended to be in houses rather than flats? outwards not upwards?this produced a great lateral expansion of the conurbation. In 1820 a man standing at Temple Bar could have walked to the extreme limit of the built-up area if he walked two miles either way to west or east (to Hyde Park Corner or Whitechapel) or about one and a half miles to north or south (to the Angel or Elephant and Castle). Apart from some ribbon development along the main routes leading from London, London was still a relatively compact city.22 On the other hand, by 1914 'the built-up area was contained within a circle 18 miles across, extending from Edmonton on the north to Croydon in the south, and from Ealing in the west to Woolwich in the east'?with lines of settlement stretching out along the radial routes beyond.23 The population of the conurbation increased by 20% or more every decade between 1841 and 1881 and by just under 21% in the two decades between 1881 and 1901.24 These total figures mask the differences in population change in the inner and outer areas: the central area of London began actually to lose population from the middle of the century; what became the L.C.C. area as a whole achieved its highest rate of growth in the middle of the nineteenth century, and the increases in population became smaller and smaller until by 1911 its population was stationary; meanwhile Outer London's rates of increase reached a peak (50 % per decade) between 1861 and 1891. This immense growth of London was made possible from 1830 onwards by the develop? ment of public transport. Up to 1830 if a Jew</page><page sequence="5">82 Vivian D. Lipman lived outside the area of 'first settlement', he did so because he was so wealthy that he could keep a carriage; or because he was retired and did not need to come into town daily; or because, like the members of the Western and Borough congregations, he had settled in an outlying part of the town for business reasons and lived over or near his work. In the early nineteenth century short-stage coaches (the London counterpart of the better-known long? distance stage coaches) made it possible for some of the upper middle class to commute. But fares were high (Is. 6d. to 2s. for inside seats to the City from Paddington, 6d. less outside). Those who could not or would not pay the fares but lived outside the centre had to walk to work; as the young Moses Monte fiore had walked to the City from Kenning ton.25 Ordinary middle-class commuting be? came possible only in the 1830s, when there was a vast number of competing omnibuses, following Shillibeer's first omnibus in 1829; and fares went down to 6d. for short journeys or Is. to the outskirts.26 It is important to stress the role of the buses in the 1830-1860 period, not the railways, although there was intense railway development in the London area from the 1830s onwards. At this period, the railways coming into London were bringing in the long-distance passengers, not the commuters. In 1854, for example, about 250,000 com? muters came into the City every day to work: 200,000 on foot, 15,000 by boat, 20,000 by bus, 6,000 by railway.27 Already in 1837 'an immense number of individuals, whose incomes vary from ?150 to ?400 or ?600, and whose business does not require their presence till nine or ten in the mornings and who can leave it at five or six in the evenings'28 were travel? ling in by bus. The hours mentioned?nine to ten in the morning and five to six in the evening?are almost precisely the hours of his working day quoted by the Jewish suburban commuter who signed himself 'Kashruth' in the letter to the Voice of Jacob in 1843, quoted at the beginning of this lecture. BLOOMSBURY London had already by 1830 grown west wards along the south of the New Road (Marylebone Road) as far as Edgware Road. The transport developments of the 1830-1860 period made possible the north-western thrust up the Edgware Road, further development westward along the northern side of the Park into Bayswater, as well as development in London northwards through Islington into Highbury. Another area for suburban develop? ment was the fanning out of new suburbs south of the Thames; in this the railways did play an early part, but Jews were relatively little affected by this development. The first area to which middle-class Jews moved out around 1830 was Finsbury Square and Finsbury Circus and the streets (such as South Place) between them. This comparatively small area held 5 % of the Jewish upper- and middle-class families in the 1848 Post Office Directory. This area, however, was too near the City synagogues to produce a separate synagogal or communal life of its own. Since the main axis of transport communica? tions ran westwards from the City, it is not surprising that Jewish settlement first spread in this direction. Bloomsbury, while not a sub? urban community in the later sense, did give rise to synagogues serving a local residential population. In the 1830s and 1840s it was probably the Jewish residential district for the upper and upper middle classes.29 Taking again the sample of 100 Jewish names in the 1848 Post Office Directory, 25% lived in the area bounded by Tottenham Court Road on the west, Euston Square on the north, Gray's Inn Road on the east, and Holborn on the south. There is reason to think that this area became less fashionable in general esteem after about 1850. Guide books of the 1850s say that while it no longer held ?the rank and fashion of the town', it contained many merchants and lawyers, who preferred the larger houses at rather lower rents to the more fashionable, if smaller, houses further west: 'worthy lawyers and citizens who look more to comfort than fashion'.30 In the 1850s the Jewish families in this area ranged from the very affluent to middle-class families with more modest means. For instance, the 1851 Census returns show</page><page sequence="6">The Rise of Jewish Suburbia 83 thirteen Jewish households in and around Gower Street. They include Aaron and Jacob Mocatta; Lewis Levy, the turnpike contractor; Walter Josephs, founder of the Jews' Infant Schools; James Lewis, solicitor (whose family included the future Sir George Lewis, then an articled clerk of 17); Lawrence Hyam, the out? fitter, and Hyam Hyam, 'holder of railway stock'. But they include also the widow Emma Henry (mother of Michael, the future editor of the Jewish Chronicle), who could afford only one servant for a family of six.31 The foundation of the Reform Congregation, whose synagogue was opened in 1842, apart from the questions of doctrine and ritual, was also due to some extent to the desire to provide a local synagogue for Jewish families in Bloomsbury. But it soon moved westwards in 1849 to Cavendish Square; and when in the next decade the City Ashkenazi and Sephardi congregations also founded synagogues for those who had left the City, they did so further west than Bloomsbury, in Great Portland Street and Wigmore Street respectively.32 The Post Office Directory list of 1848 has 11% of the Jewish names in the Marylebone quadrilateral (Regent Street, Oxford Street, Marylebone Road, Edgware Road) and this area evidently gained in Jewish resi? dents in the 1840s compared with Blooms? bury. Although the tide of migration moved on, the West Central district was far from deserted. In 1872 the Jewish Chronicle noted how many Jews still lived on the Bedford, Grafton, Port man, and Manchester estates. The Central Synagogue of 1,000 seats was almost thronged on Sabbaths by praying seat-holders and 'Russell Square, which stands on the site of the field of Forty Footsteps, now resounds on Sabbaths and festivals with many repeated forty footsteps of Jewish pilgrims on their way to Synagogue'.33 The Central Synagogue in Great Portland Street continued to be one of the larger and wealthier synagogues of the United Synagogues throughout this period, though as the century went on it was passed in the level of its wealth by the New West End, Bayswater, and Hampstead syna? gogues. BAYSWATER In 1860 the tide of fashionable London Jewry had spread westwards over the Edgware Road into the area then known as Tyburnia. Although the area north of Hyde Park had begun to be developed in the 1820s, when the gallows at Tyburn (Marble Arch) was removed and the elegant squares and crescents of Tyburnia were laid out in the angle between the Edgware and Bayswater roads, it was not completely built up until there was an intensi? fication of development in the late 1850s and early 1860s. Trollope, in a chapter of The Small House at Allington, published in November 1863, describes this development. 'A residence had been taken for the couple in a very fashionable row of buildings abutting on the Bayswater Road. . . . The house was quite new, and the street being -unfinished had about it a strong smell of mortar . . . but nevertheless it was acknowledged to be in a quite correct locality. From the end of the crescent a corner of Hyde Park could be seen, and the other abutted on a very handsome terrace indeed, in which lived an ambassador?from South America? a few bankers' senior clerks, and a peer of the realm.' And he adds, no doubt with a novelist's hyperbole, how fashion had moved from the Marylebone area north of Oxford Street: 'We know how vile is the sound of Baker Street and how absolutely foul to the polite ear is the name of Fitzroy Square [although] the houses in those purlieus are substantial, warm and of good size.' For the Jews who moved into this new fashionable area north of Bayswater Road, a new synagogue?the Bayswater Synagogue? was quickly founded in 1863: the same year as that in which Trollope wrote the passage quoted and the same year in which the first underground railway was opened, connecting the City with Bayswater. Here we have what, in the context of the time, was a suburban community?we must remember that the concept of the suburb remains the same, but the position of what is a suburb changes with the moving frontier of the built-up area. Bays water was a suburban community, with its own synagogue, its own social life, and its</page><page sequence="7">84 Vivian D. Lipman members commuting to their businesses in the central area or East London. It was said that Bayswater had taken 'a whole congregation' from the Great Portland Street Synagogue. Out of 224 original members of the Bayswater Synagogue in 1863, 110, or nearly half, lived in the area north of the Park and Kensington Gardens and south of the Harrow Road. Only 5 % of the original members lived in the area around Great Portland Street. In 1863 the main axis along which Jews lived in Bayswater was Westbourne Terrace, but a considerable number lived further east, nearer to Marble Arch, then the height of fashion for London residence.34 From this area, Jewish settlement spread in two directions. The first was westwards along the north side of the Park; the other was northwards beyond the Great Western Railway line into Maida Vale. Each of these trends had a different character. The western movement into the Lancaster Gate area, which had been built up by about 1850, and beyond gave rise to the New West End Synagogue. This, after a prolonged debate, was opened in 1879; and manifestly attracted members of the Bayswater Synagogue living near the Park and Kensing? ton Gardens. The New West End Synagogue was probably the most affluent Jewish con? gregation in the years up to 1914; in terms of average contribution per male seat let, the New West End Synagogue was consistently, year by year, markedly above every other constituent of the United Synagogue up to 1914. Beyond this area north of the Park there later developed in Notting Hill a much more proletarian congregation, to be followed by a similar congregation in Shepherd's Bush. In what was in 1914 the far west?Ealing? Jewish services were already being held in 1912.35 Also in the western suburbs, a syna? gogue was opened in 1890 in Hammersmith to cater for families which had already settled in Hammersmith, West Kensington, Shep? herd's Bush, Chiswick, Fulham, and Barnes, some of whom were members of the New West End Synagogue.36 MAIDA VALE The other direction in which development spread from Bayswater was Maida Vale. Building had begun in this area about 1830 and it was built up in its southern part, as far as the canal, by 1860, when the Bayswater Synagogue was being planned. Most of Maida Vale west of the main Edgware Road artery was built up between 1860 and 1870, although there was still some open land in the northern part of the area until about 1900.3 7 This Maida Vale area attracted a very considerable middle class Jewish settlement, and it is this settlement which, in effect, 'took over5 the Bayswater Synagogue after the foundation of the New West End Synagogue. Whereas in 1863 110 of the 224 members lived near the Park and only 55 in Maida Vale, in 1890 out of 438 members, 249 lived in Maida Vale and 102 near the Park. The foundation of the New West End Synagogue also had an effect on the financial level of the members of the Bayswater Syna? gogue. Whereas in 1879 the average contribu? tion per male seat let was ?13 13s. 9d., it fell to ?12 6s. 9d. in 1880, the year after the forma? tion of the New West End Synagogue, when the latter had a comparable figure of ?13 14s. 4d. Although the Bayswater Syna? gogue's financial level remained relatively high in the table of London congregations, it re? mained appreciably below the level of the New West End Synagogue till 1914. The 1870-1900 period was the great age of Maida Vale as a Jewish suburb. The Jewish Chronicle in 1872 described the attraction of this region, defined as bounded by Harrow Road on the south and Kilburn on the north, with Kensal on the left and 'flirting coyly with St. John's Wood on the right'. 'So captivating were these regions considered that Jews settled there when the journey to the City involved awkward journeys by omnibus and cabs. But when the underground railway was extended from Edgware Road to Notting Hill [this was in 1868] London existence seemed possible only within a mile either side of Royal Oak.' 'Hither our brethren flocked in great numbers. We could name streets in which every third house is rented by a Jewish family. Portsdown Road [described as 'a thoroughfare which touches the canal at its southern end but whose northern extremity has not yet been</page><page sequence="8">The Rise of Jewish Suburbia 85 discovered by any adventurous traveller'] is specially distinguished by its Jewish population'. For the novelists of the 1880s Maida Vale was the suburb par excellence of the Jewish well to-do middle class. The novelist Amy Levy, in Reuben Sachs (published in 1889), tends to compare the social status of Maida Vale proper unfavourably with the southern part of Bayswater near the Park, since she refers to the Maida Vale family to whose 'eminently provincial minds' their Bayswater relations were very great people indeed and 'they derived no little prestige in Maida Vale from their connections with so distinguished a family'. Maida Vale in the novel by Julia Frankau ('Frank Danby'), Dr. Phillips: A Maida Vale Idyll, also published in 1889, is portrayed in the same light as Hendon in Mr. Brian Glanville's The Bankrupts in our period. Maida Vale is the scene of an inward looking, materialist, anti-intellectual com? munity. 'All the burning questions of the hour are to them a dead letter; art, literature and politics exist not for them. They have but one aim, the acquisition of wealth. Playing cards at each other's houses is their sole experience of the charms of social intercourse; their interests are bounded by their homes and those of their neighbouring brethren'; and much is made of card parties four times a week for ten months in the year, followed by suppers of smoked beef and cucumber. We need not accept the picture in all its unfavourable detail; the life of the Bayswater Synagogue under its successive ministers, Dr. Hermann Adler and Professor Sir Herman Gollancz, was far from devoid of spiritual value; and I might add that of 156 London addresses of the original members of the Jewish Historical Society in 1893-1894, no fewer than 34 were in Maida Vale, more than for any other residential district.38 But the point I wish to make is the appear? ance of Maida Vale as the symbol of the closely knit Jewish community of the 1880s. The local references in the novels are clear: it is the 'new Jerusalem which they have appropriated with their slow and characteristic walk ... con? gregating in Clifton Road, in the gardens of Sutherland Avenue, in Warrington Crescent'.39 In the 1880s there must have been over 1,000, possibly 2,000, Jewish residents in an area with about 10,000 total population in Maida Vale. The Booth Survey of London Life and Labour shows most of this Maida Vale area in 1888 as 'middle class?well-to-do' (coloured red), with only Sutherland Avenue, Warrington Crescent, Randolph Crescent, Clifton Gardens as 'upper middle class or upper class?wealthy5 (coloured yellow). On the other hand, nearly all of the Bayswater area near the Park is shown as 'upper middle class or upper class?wealthy'. From 1890 onwards, there was a tendency for Jews to move out of Maida Vale into the newer residential areas of the north-west, although this was to some extent counteracted by the building of some of London's earliest mansion blocks of flats, which were particularly attrac? tive to older people, whose families had grown up.40 Even so, the number of members of the Bayswater Synagogue living in Maida Vale declined from 249 in 1890 to 187 by 1914. NORTH LONDON Soon after the westward thrust of suburbia in the 1830s, there followed a parallel, if rather less fashionable, move to North London. The suburban development of North London had begun from the Pentonville Road, which was built up around 1773, and at the end of the eighteenth century there were a few Jews in the area. Canonbury, which between 1800 and 1830 was very much a second Bloomsbury, had also a number of Jewish residents. But more substantial Jewish settlement began with the laying out of the Barnsbury area in the 1820s and 1830s.41 Middle-class Jews from the City started to settle in some numbers in Islington from about 1840,42 and about 8% of the Jewish middle and upper middle-class names in the 1848 Post Office Court Directory have Islington addresses (compared with 25% in Bloomsbury, 11% in Marylebone, 12% in Tyburnia, and 12% still in the City and East End). But regular religious services were not started till 1861, by which time there were nearly 1,000 Jews in the area. The first pro? posal for a synagogue came from the Sephardim in I860,43 although Solomon Haim Andrade's</page><page sequence="9">86 Vivian D. Lipman private synagogue at Spencer House, Lower (now Essex) Road, was in fact not opened till about 1865.44 In the meanwhile, the Ashkenazim had organised services in Barnsbury Hall at least from 1864,45 and in 1867, with the aid of the Chief Rabbi and of at least three members of the Rothschild family (Baron Ferdinand, Sir Anthony, and Nathaniel?later the first Lord), a local committee raised the funds for opening the North London Synagogue in Lofting Road in 1868.46 This is in Barnsbury in the south? west corner of Islington, and although by 1872 it had 126 seat-holders47 it soon became clear that it was being left behind by the trend of Jewish migration to the north and east. Islington was growing fast especially after 1850, when development spread north of the line of the North London Railway. From 95,000 in 1851, the population rose to 155,000 in 1861, 216,000 in 1871, 238,000 in 1881, 320,000 in 1891. After 1850 Highbury became covered with villas, although in the Highbury New Park, laid out in 1859-1860, the houses and their grounds were so spacious that the district was known as the 'Mayfair of Isling? ton.'48 It is important not to underrate the social attractions of at least parts of Islington in the 1860s. Upper Street was so extremely fashionable a shopping street at this period that in 1863 William Whiteley hesitated between it and Westbourne Grove as a site for his new store. Even in 1881 'girls with trousseaux on their minds had better haste to Islington's classic ground and do some shopping there'.49 It was to Highbury and the Mildmay Park area to the south-east that Jews flocked from the late 1860s onwards. Already in 1872 the Jewish Chronicle had noted that the North London Synagogue was inconveniently placed for the growing Jewish population to the north? east of it, and examination of this synagogue's members' addresses in 1878 shows the majority living in Highbury or Canonbury. It was not surprising that there should be a demand for a synagogue to serve Highbury. One did come but as a result of a group holding services further east. It was said in 1874 that there were 700 Jewish families within half an hour's walk of Dalston Junction but a three-quarter-hour's walk from the North London Synagogue in Barnsbury (it will be noted how the measure is always the Sabbath morning walk and the assumption that a synagogue must be within walking distance). It was proposed to establish the synagogue for the Jewish residents of Dalston and the Balls Pond Road area. Services were held first at Colveston House, Ridley Road, and a syna? gogue was opened in Birkbeck Road in 1874. Both these are just east of the main north south arterial road, the original Ermine Street, which is known at different parts of its course as Kingsland Road, Stoke Newington High Street, and Stamford Hill. In 1876 the con? gregation moved west into a leased building in Mildmay Road and then in 1885 a little further west to Poet's Road.50 It thus was a congrega? tion of Jews living mainly in Highbury and Canonbury but confusingly retaining the name of Dalston, where the services had first been held. The area around Poet's Road, centrally situated for Canonbury to the south, Highbury to the west, and Mildmay Park to the east, received other congregations; Andrade's Sephardi Synagogue was permanently estab? lished near by in 1886 as the Mildmay Park Synagogue and a Frankfort-inspired Beth Hamedrash was established in Newington Green Road in 1886, transferring to Fern tower Road in 1892. To the east of Ermine Street, Hackney, which was until about 1850 still separated from Islington by a salient of undeveloped land, seems to have attracted a suburban Jewish community slightly later than Islington, although it had been a favourite village for upper-class Jewish residents in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In 1862 a small group began to hold services in Hackney Road East but had difficulty in getting permanent accommodation.51 In 1876 the projected congregation in Dalston moved west? wards, as we have seen. It was not till 1881 that another group began services in Darnley Road, off Mare Street, in the centre of Hackney; they moved, as the South Hackney Synagogue, to Mildmay Road in 1885 and to Devonshire Road in 1892. East of Ermine Street, the main growth took</page><page sequence="10">PLATE IX dl STOKE ? a\ NEWINGTON | ? T7 S^0 HIGHBURY |\ | g clapton \kV J MILDMAY x \T PARK g ^ t^Jj^^^mm^-?- BALLS PQND Rg ^^^f?ZNBURY if DALSTON BARNSBURY | ^ * Q t^^4" &lt; HACKNEY ^ V2 MILE ^JL^^T^ Sketch map of North London 1880 [See pp. 78-103</page><page sequence="11">PLATE X</page><page sequence="12">The Rise of Jewish Suburbia 87 place rather later than in Islington. The area which subsequently became the Metropolitan Borough of Hackney increased in population from 38,000 in 1861 to 125,000 in 1871, the main development being in the 1860s. Stoke Newington, further north and to the west of Ermine Street, with a much smaller area, grew from 17,500 in 1881 to 37,500 in 1891, the main growth there taking place in the 1880s. Development was moving north and Jewish settlement followed. Another congregation was founded in Dalston in 1887; this time, instead of moving west of Ermine Street, they went further north to Shacklewell Lane, being known as the Stoke Newington Synagogue, although the parish and later Borough of Stoke Newing? ton is in fact on the other or western side of Ermine Street, which at this point is called Stoke Newington High Street. Still further north, in Finsbury Park, a congregation had been formed in 1886; and the decision in 1913 to move the New Synagogue from the City to Stamford Hill marked the recognition that Stamford Hill, still further north up Ermine Street, was now a major Jewish residential area. North London settlement was of great importance in the development of suburban Jewry and indeed of London suburbia as a whole. For the observer of social life in the late Victorian period, North London was middle-class suburbia par excellence. 'The Northern part of the district from Islington to Stamford Hill and from Holloway to Balls Pond and Canonbury provides the best example of London middle class life and of the religious and social influences to which it is subject5, wrote Charles Booth in a volume published in 1902 but based on an earlier survey. He comments on the strength of non? conformity, the well-filled churches, their middle-class composition (with neither working class nor those who kept carriages), the ideals of piety and respectability which moved them: 'with them property and religion go hand in hand5.52 Although the area thus shared this general air of middle-class piety and respectability, there were recognised social differences. Booth showed Highbury New Park, with its tribu? taries (Highbury Hill, Aberdeen Park, and G part of Highbury Quadrant), as upper middle class or wealthy (yellow on his map). He said that this was called 'the new Jerusalem'. He added that 'Dalston and Canonbury are said to be among the first steps upwards of the Whitechapel Jew'. Both Dalston and Canon? bury were ordinary middle class 'well-to-do'? red on his maps?as distinct from Barnsbury, which, apart from the middle-class streets in, for instance, Barnsbury Square, was pre? dominantly comfortably working class (pink on the Booth maps) by 1900.5 3 Jewish observers noted these distinctions too. Highbury was described by Zangwill as 'that genteel suburb ... an enchanted ecstasy for the mother and the Jewish group of girls, taken at once to the bosom of a great German clan, and admitted to a new world of dances and dinners, of "At Homes" and theatres and card parties . . . the old father wandered out to the Beth Hamedrash, which a local faction had just instituted in North London and in which, under the guidance of a Polish sage, Daniel strove to concentrate his aged wits on the ritual problems of Babylon'.54 Dalston, on the other hand, is 'villadom'. It has 'dingy perspectives' which limit the social ambitions of the family of the boot-factory owner of Whitechapel. 'These ambitions had been sufficiently gratified by migration from Whitechapel. Their profits went to enlarge their factory and to buy houses, a favourite form of investment in their set. Zillah could cook fish to perfection, both fried and stewed, and the latter variety both sweet and sour.' No doubt she had to cook, because she had only one maid, at ?13 per annum. Zangwill also describes the synagogal life of Dalston, stressing its relative Anglicisation, with a minister 'one of the new school of Rabbis, who preach ser? mons in English and dress like Christian clergymen, as befitted the dignity of Dalston villadom'. He is taken aback by a difficult ritual problem?'his acquaintance with the vast casuistic literature of his people was of the shallowest'?and he leaves it to the Beadle. ' "No doubt the Beadle is right", he observed profoundly.'55 Hackney too is 'dingy' and, compared with Highbury, 'all but outside the radius of</page><page sequence="13">88 Vivian D. Lipman respectability'. But, compared with the real East End, it represented petty bourgeois com? forts: 'Everywhere bow windows, Venetian blinds, little front gardens?all that had repre? sented domestic grandeur after a childhood of apartments in Spitalfields . . . the flowerpots on the hall table, the proudly purchased hat rack, the metal umbrella-stand . .. my gilt clock that I trembled even to wind up, and the big vase with pictures on it and my antimacassars, my beautiful couch that nobody had ever sat on ... hot meat every day and fish from Scotland, even when plaice was 8d. a pound', and the servant at 5s. a week.56 South Hackney (as distinct from the pros? perous residences of Clapton) was, between Mare Street and Kingsland Road, lower middle class;57 it was subject to an overspill from Stepney and Bethnal Green as these reservoirs filled up; but it was still at this period the first step on the way from the East End. Early settlement by Jews of this whole area of North London was no doubt assisted by the North London Railway. The line was completed with a terminus to Broad Street by 1865 and in the 1870s it was the good-class commuter railway in London. It had stations at Barnsbury (in Offord Road, just north of the North London Synagogue), Highbury, Canonbury (at the intersection of Canonbury, Highbury New Park, and Mildmay Park), and Dalston Junction, and thus connected all these popular Jewish residential areas with the City.58 The growth of this northern area can be seen to some extent from the statistics of the United Synagogue. In the five years 1874-1878, the average number of interments per year from the Northern Postal District?which in Jewish terms means Islington?was 37; for the five years 1909-1913 the average was 144. In addition, for those last five years, the average for the North-Eastern Postal District (the area east of Ermine Street), which was not separate in the earlier period but merged with the Eastern area, was 63. Assuming a death-rate of around 14 per 1,000, this would mean a population, for the United Synagogue alone, of around 15,000 in North and North-East London. This would be roughly 10% of the total Jewish population of London. The membership figures show the North London Synagogue, in Barnsbury, rising to 271 in 1883, then gradually falling to 163 in 1890 and then gradually rising again to 267 by 1913. On the other hand, seat-holders in the Barnsbury area, whose average contributions to the North London Synagogue were in the region of ?7 a year in the 1880s, gradually fell to ?3 17s. 3d. in 1911. Then again, we see the so-called Dalston Synagogue, in the Highbury/ Ganonbury area, increasing its membership from 268 in 1886 to 365 in 1913. It kept its average membership contribution around or above the ?6 level until 1908, when it fell slightly for the rest of the period. And against this, the South Hackney congregation only once exceeded the figure of ?4 per annum per member and the level of its financial position was little more than that of some of the East London congregations, which would reflect lower middle-class or upper working-class standards of income. THE NORTH-WEST OF LONDON We turn now to Jewish settlement in the north-western areas. These areas on the eastern side of the Edgware Road?in St. John's Wood and Hampstead?seem to have lagged slightly behind development on the western side in Maida Vale. This was in spite of the fact that these areas were marginally nearer to Central London and had been built up slightly earlier; and the fact that in 1835 the Finchley Road, cut as a turnpike to connect Central London with the Great North Road, by-passing the difficult hills of Hampstead and Highgate, provided a new access along which develop? ment could spread. Development of the area west of Regent's Park with semi-detached villas about 1830,5 9 instead of with terraces, was regarded as revolutionary?the prototype of the new suburban development and its classic example: 'Here dwells middle class London', wrote a guide book in 1851.60 By 1855 all of St. John's Wood was built over with stuccoed villas 'in their bosky gardens'.61 The St. John's Wood villas were on the Eyre Estate; development on the Eton College Estate began in the 1830s (Adelaide Road from</page><page sequence="14">The Rise of Jewish Suburbia 89 1839) and the Belsize Estate was laid out in 1841, but development did not get much further at that stage. A northward spur of the new underground railway, intended to reach the Hampstead Junction Railway at Finchley Road, was projected in the 1860s but in fact reached only as far as Swiss Cottage in 1868 and went no further. The Swiss Cottage Station was on the edge of open country and those arriving at the opening ceremony spent some time admiring the rural view. One reason for the delay in development was that no building could take place on the 416 acres of the Maryon Wilson Estate until Sir Thomas Maryon Wilson died in 1869.62 There were a few Jewish residents in St. John's Wood in 1848 (perhaps half a dozen in the Post Office Directory Court Guide in 1848) but only seven St. John's Wood residents joined the new Bayswater Synagogue in 1863. In the 1870s, however, development in the northern part of St. John's Wood and in Hampstead between Finchley Road and Fitz john's Avenue proceeded apace. The popula? tion of the parish of Hampstead jumped from 19,000 in 1861 to 47,000 in 1881. In 1878 Fitzjohn's Avenue was laid out with large residences in Dutch or Jacobethan' style. Frognal was built up in the 1880s, as was the remainder of the area between Finchley Road and West End Lane. The railway, which had not got beyond Swiss Cottage in 1868, was ex? tended to West Hampstead in 1879 and reached Willesden Green by 1880. The North London line also provided direct access from West End Lane via Finchley Road and Hampstead to Broad Street. The area soon acquired a cosmopolitan flavour. In 1890 it was reported that 'it is now nothing unusual to hear occasionally, by chance, almost as much if not sometimes more German spoken than English';63 and at the end of the century Charles Booth wrote of Hampstead: 'the old families leave, the Jews come, the artistic and Bohemian element prevails'.64 From 1870, the Jews had certainly come. In 1871 Henry Lewis Cohen, of Alexandra Road, urging the formation of a new synagogue in St. John's Wood, wrote that there were at least 60 Jewish families there to his knowledge, who (apart from a few who walked to Great Port? land Street on Sabbaths) had to walk three miles to Bayswater.65 Although this was a respectable number, it was not sufficient to enable the St. John's Wood Synagogue to be formed, as was hoped, in 1872. But in 1875 50 families agreed to join; a temporary synagogue was opened in 1876; and the Abbey Road building was opened in 1882. The Jewish Chronicle wrote in 1880 of the 'large rapidly increasing numbers of Jewish residents in the immediate neighbourhood' of St. John's Wood.66 By 1882, membership of the St. John's Wood Synagogue was 150 males and by 1901 reached a pre-1914 peak of 382. The spread of development northward led to the formation of the Hampstead Synagogue in Dennington Park Road but this was bound to take members from St. John's Wood, and the Hampstead Synagogue had nearly 500 members, far more than St. John's Wood, in the years before 1914. The Hampstead area was in the late 1880s and 1890s a favourite one for the Jewish scholar and intellectual. Several of the Wan? derers or 'Wandering Jews' described by Pro? fessor Norman Bentwich in his 1960 Presidential Address67 lived in this area in the 1880s: Solomon Schechter (around whom the group crystallised) lived in Gascony Avenue, Kilburn; Joseph Jacobs in Lansdowne Terrace and L. J. Greenberg in Hilltop Road, both off West End Lane; Asher Myers in Abbey Road; Arthur Davies in Greville Road, Maida Vale; Israel Zangwill in Oxford Road, Kilburn; Solomon J. Solomon in Maida Vale itself; and, west of the Maida Vale highway but near by, Isidore Harris in Portsdown Road and Israel Abrahams in Elgin Avenue; Herbert Bentwich lived in the more elegant Avenue Road. In the 1880s Jews living in the Kilburn area were virtually on the edge of the built-up area, with undeveloped land still around. So popular did this area become that the Jews followed the course of development into Brondesbury and over the L.G.G. boundary into Middlesex. It was in the 1885-1905 period that the southern part of Willesden developed (the urban district increasing in population from 38,000 in 1885 to almost 140,000 in 1905); and the railway</page><page sequence="15">90 Vivian D. Lipman line to Baker Street, opened in 1880, was augmented in 1906 by an express service of buses with three horses, instead of two, from Kilburn to the West End, a motor-bus service from Brondesbury to the Law Courts having been started in 1905.68 This rapid develop? ment of Brondesbury led to a decision to found a Brondesbury Synagogue in 1900 and the synagogue in Chevening Road was opened in 1905, although its congregation came largely in those days from the Kilburn side. By 1914, however, there were members of the Brondes? bury Synagogue living in Cricklewood and even in Golders Green, which had been linked to Central London by the opening of the Northern Line Tube railway in 1907. Between 1907 and 1914 the advent of the Tube line increased the total population of Golders Green from 9,000 to 23,000. Jewish services were already being held in West Heath Drive, near Golders Green Station, the nucleus of the new suburb, in 1913, although the Golders Green Synagogue itself, like the Cricklewood Synagogue, was not founded till after 1914. All in all, in the years immediately before 1913, the North-Western area as a whole (from St. John's Wood to Willesden) probably had a larger population of Jews than North Eastern London, though still not as great as Islington. WORKING-CLASS SUBURBS So far, apart from the overspill from the East End into Hackney, the story has mainly been of middle-class migration. This was true not only of the Jews but of London's population generally. But around 1870 or 1880 there was an increasing tendency for working-class migration as well. Whole new working-class suburbs developed, nourished by cheap railway fares.69 and the development of new railway lines. After 1870 a network of horse tramways offered the cheapest fares of all.70 Trams were, as the Cornhill Magazine called them in 1890, 'the working man's familiar vehicle'?or, to use Richard Hoggart's phrase, 'the gondolas of the people'.71 Cheap and frequent transport made it pos? sible for the working class to commute; a rise in real incomes per head by about 25% between 1880 and 1890 provided the means;72 and loss of residential accommodation due to redevelopment in the central area, which was the traditional home of the working class, pro? vided the insistent pressure to move.73 No longer did the middle class ride, the working class walk, to work.74 In the Jewish context, the development of working-class suburbs in the north-east of London on both sides of the Lea Valley is particularly significant. On the western side Tottenham and Edmonton increased in popu? lation five-fold between 1871 and 1901 (Tottenham from 18,000 to 104,000 and Edmonton from 8,000 to 47,000). There was a similar growth in south-west Essex (East and West Ham and the areas on the eastern side of the Lea Valley) from 128,000 in 1871 to 672,000 in 1901. It was these areas which were served by the Great Eastern and, to a lesser extent, the Great Northern railways. Lines had been opened earlier to Edmonton in 1872 and Walthamstow in 1873;75 in the 1880s working-class traffic on these lines greatly increased and commuting became possible for working-class Jews. Indeed, it became un? necessary for some when units of the furniture industry began to move up the Lea Valley to Tottenham or Walthamstow in the years before 1914.76 Apart from the normal tendency in this period of the working class to move from the East End up the Lea Valley or into East and West Ham, there were in addition planned efforts to disperse the Jewish immigrants from the East End. In 1903 the Jewish Dispersal Committee was set up to provide some of the more Anglicised of the recent immigrants with help to move to the suburbs of London as well as to smaller provincial towns. The provision of synagogues had already been recognised by Samuel Montagu as an incentive to immi? grants to move, when he sponsored the forma? tion of the Notting Hill Synagogue. The United Synagogue adopted its Associate Synagogues scheme in 1899 to help members of the 'industrial class' to run self-supporting syna? gogues in the suburbs. Under these schemes synagogues were assisted in Poplar, where one</page><page sequence="16">The Rise of Jewish Suburbia 91 had been founded already in 1890, New Cross, East Ham, and West Ham. Other synagogues were founded in Walthamstow in 1902 and Tottenham in 1905. These were all small com? munities, not having more than a few hundreds each in the early years of the twentieth century.77 Nearly all the districts mentioned have been north of the Thames. Jewish settlement in South London was scattered over a very wide area. In 1867 a resident of Brixton suggested that a synagogue should be formed, for in? stance, at Stockwell, for the many residents of that area and of Tulse Hill and Clapham.78 Services were begun in 1875, at Clapham, under the auspices of the Reform Synagogue, but they closed in 1877.79 By 1905, two-thirds of the members of the Borough Synagogue lived at Brixton or Clapham, or were scattered over an area of about 18 square miles.80 The formation of a separate synagogue in Brixton was achieved before 1914. At the other extremities of South London, congregations were formed at New Cross in 1899 and at Kew in 1905. PATTERNS OF JEWISH SUBURBAN SETTLEMENT It may be asked why South London, which has so many attractions as a residential area, never has attracted really substantial Jewish settlement. The answer must lie in what one may term the linear tendency of Jewish settle? ment. When seeking new homes, Jews tend to move in a straight line, or a series of straight lines. In this way, one can see how Jews moved first into Bloomsbury, then into Marylebone, then into Tyburnia, yet never settled in any numbers south of this line. Edgware Road, Finchley Road, and Ermine Street have been other axes of settlement. Ease of access to the City and East London, where until recent times the great majority of Jews had their busi? nesses, was probably the key. We have seen already that omnibus communication in the 1830s and '40s was easiest along the line of the New Road (i.e. Euston Road, Marylebone Road) and of Oxford Street, and that this was supplemented by the first underground railway in the 1860s, which linked Bayswater to the City. Similarly, the North London Railway and the Metropolitan Line to West Hampstead provided reasonably easy means of access to the City. Residence south of the river, especi? ally in the south-west of the metropolis, has advantages for ease of access to Westminster or Whitehall; but these were not areas in which many Jews earned their living before 1914. Because of this linear tendency of Jewish settlement, which we can see in other towns, such as Manchester and Salford and Leeds, once a line of Jewish settlement has been established, further settlement tends to be a projection along this line, rather than striking out substantially in a new direction. We can thus picture the development of Jewish suburbia in the 1830-1914 period as taking place along a number of clearly defined axes. Social and economic differences between settlements along these axes can be roughly ascertained. For instance, most, though not all, of suburban Jewry before 1914 were members of the United Synagogue and therefore the statistics of average total contributions per seat let (including offerings) makes possible some financial ranking of congregations. The relative ranking follows a very consistent pattern: New West End, followed by Bays water?the western axis?almost invariably at the top; then come Hampstead and St. John's Wood?the north-western axis; then follow Dalston (i.e., Highbury), North London, Stoke Newington, and South Hackney (the northern axis).81 It is not so easy to measure the relative numerical strengths of the different areas or their total relationship to the Jewish population of London. At the end of the period, in 1914, there were between 150,000 and 180,000 Jews in Greater London. Of these, about 100,000 still lived in the East End. It is true that, as each generation grew up, its members tended to leave East London for the suburbs; but their numbers were being continually replaced by immigrants from abroad. The East End was like a great reservoir which, as soon as it was emptied, was filled again. Some idea of the strength of London Jewry outside East London and the City can be gained by analysis of the</page><page sequence="17">92 Vivian D. Lipman figures of interments for the United Synagogue, which are arranged by postal districts. The average (excluding stillbirths) for five years from 1909 to 1913 was 513. The main con? stituents of this, again averaged over five years, were 127 for the west (which included every? thing from Hammersmith to Soho); 144 for the north (mainly Islington); 85 for the north? east (Hackney, Dalston, and Clapton); 77 for the north-west (from St. John's Wood to Willesden); 41 for the south-west (which in? cluded not only South-West London, south of the Thames, but also South Kensington, Chel? sea, and Fulham); and 40 for the south-east. Applying a death-rate of about 14 per 1,000, this would suggest a population of just under 40,000. If we add to this interments for the Spanish and Portuguese congregation {e.g., for the synagogue at Lauderdale Road), for the Federation of Synagogues in North and North East London and Soho, and for the other Orthodox congregations in North London, as well as for the Western and Reform Syna? gogues, we could arrive at a total population figure of 50,000, or a little more, in the areas outside the East End. To break this down is not at all easy. My own tentative suggestion is about 10,000 in the west, about 20,000 in the north and north-east, and 6,000 or 7,000 in the north-west, with about 5,000 or 6,000 south of the river. These figures represent a very substantial dispersion, more than the whole of London Jewry, including the East End, little more than 30 years previously, just before the mass immigration began. In other words, there was a movement equivalent to the whole popula? tion of the Jewish quarter of first settlement, including allowance for natural increase, out from the East End to the suburbs within a generation. THE NEW CLASS?THE SUBURBANS This Jewish movement, of course, was only part of the general migration from the central areas to the suburbs, something which im? pressed itself on contemporary observers as an outstanding phenomenon of the age. As Sidney Low put it in 1891: 'The centre of population is shifting from the heart to the limbs. The life blood is pouring into the long arms of bricks and mortar and cheap stucco that are feeling their way out to the Surrey moors and the Essex flats and the Hertfordshire copses.'82 But it was not only a growth of bricks and mortar. The more perceptive observers saw in it the development of a new way of life, of a new breed of man. G. F. G. Masterman devoted the third chapter of his book, published in 1909, on The Condition of England to 'The suburbans . . . those enormous suburban peoples which are practically the product of the past half-century and have so greatly increased, even within the last decade. They are the creations not of the individual but of the commercial and business activities of London. They form a homo? geneous civilisation?detached, self-centred, unostentatious?covering the hills along the northern and southern boundaries of the City and spreading their conquests over the green fields beyond. They are the peculiar product of England and America; of the nations which have pre-eminently added commerce, business, and finance to the work of manufacture and agriculture. It is a life of security; a life of sedentary occupation; a life of respectability'. Looking back on the nineteenth-century suburb, Lewis Mumford has depicted it as the result of the middle-class reaction against life in the crowded centre of the Victorian City: the desire to escape from the disease, the noise, the dirt, the smoke. 'Life was actually in danger in this new urban milieu of industrialism and commercialism, and the merest counsel of prudence was to flee?flee with all one's goods, as Lot and his household had fled from the sultry hell of Sodom and Gomorrah . . . the suburb was a middle-class effort to find a private solution to the depression and disorder of the befouled metropolis. . . .' As a result of this retreat, the suburb manifested a number of related social characteristics. 'First, it was a segregated community set apart not merely by space but by class stratification: a sort of green ghetto dedicated to the elite. That smug Victorian phrase "we keep ourselves to our? selves" expresses the spirit of the suburb . it tended to remain a one-class community,</page><page sequence="18">The Rise of Jewish Suburbia 93 with just a sufficient fringe of tradesmen and servants to keep it going?the latter often con? demned to use the central metropolis as their dormitory. Segregation, in practice, means compulsory association, or at least cohabita? tion; for if there are any choices, they lie out? side the immediate community.'83 WHY JEWS MOVED TO THE SUBURBS Against this picture of the origins and character of the Victorian suburb and its middle-class commuting inhabitants, we may examine the Jewish suburban resident of the same period. As so often, we find the Jew is like his neighbour, only more so. When the Jewish Victorian moved out to a suburb, he was even more likely than his neighbour to be a com? muter, to divide his life between his residential dormitory and the area where he earned his daily bread. Because of the types of Jewish occupation in the nineteenth century, the Jewish middle-class suburban dweller was likely to have to travel to the City or East End. Finance, the clothing trade, the specialised industries or trades with which London Jews were associated (from cigar-manufacturing to orange-dealing) were not carried on in the residential suburbs. While there were some Jews who settled in a suburb because they had opened a retail business there, the Jewish middle-class suburbanites were unlikely at this period to be the local doctor, the local solicitor, the local prosperous shopkeeper. They were much more likely to commute, whether to the Stock Exchange, the City bank, the Inns of Court, or to their Whitechapel shops or factories.84 The middle-class Jew was drawn out to the suburbs by the same considerations as his neighbours. The Jewish Chronicle, in 1867, wrote of 'the large number of Jews, who in quest of houses where they can breathe pure and untainted air, naturally turn to such neighbourhoods as Highbury and Islington'.85 There were, it is true, other factors at work. 'Londoners, owing to the peculiarities of London life, the revolution of its map, and the requirements of health, finance, business and family, cannot all reside in the neighbourhood of existing synagogues.'86 'There are some who are of opinion', wrote Michael Henry, the Editor, in 1872, 'that Jews ought always to select their residences in vicinities in which there are synagogues, forgetful or unmindful of the fact that persons cannot always reside where they like. Business and professional considera? tions, even the vulgar consideration of house rent (absurd as that trifling consideration may seem to rich men to whom ?100 a year, more or less, is of no moment, or to idle men who never sympathise with the cares of the in? dustrious)?all these and other considerations may oblige or induce a man to reside in a neighbourhood where there is not a synagogue. Moreover, as regards London, no individual is responsible for its gigantic and increasing dimensions, for the constant alterations that destroy thoroughfares and districts or convert residential streets into business streets or aug? ment the value of house property, or render desirable neighbourhoods undesirable or vice versa9.87 JEWISH RELIGIOUS ATTITUDES IN THE SUBURBS But once arrived in his currently desirable neighbourhood, the suburban Jewish house? holder manifested the tendencies of the typical suburbanites already noted. He showed a strong sense of respectability, of social solid? arity, of local community. And, although he had come into a district without a synagogue, his first move was to join with others to found one. This local synagogue also showed, in the organisation of its worship, the conventional tendencies of suburbia. Here is Michael Henry, again in 1872, giving his assessment of the religious attitudes of Anglo-Jewry in his age? just before the massive Eastern European immigration of the 1880s. 'The Judaism of England is at one and the same time conserva? tive and enlightened. The Judaism of England is an intelligent orthodoxy. Our doctrines and practices do not partake of the latitudinarian ism, the indifference, the bigotry, the fanatic? ism, the atheistical philosophy, the sensational rush after the Hukkath Hagqyim, which</page><page sequence="19">94 Vivian D. Lipman characterise?we had almost said stigmatise? the Judaism of certain countries other than our own ... we need not refer to the combined seriousness and enthusiasm of the British charac? ter as a ground for believing that, in England, Jews may be relied on for the championship of the true principles of their faith against radical innovation and neo-philosophy on the one hand and against the apprehension of ignorant fanaticism on the other hand.'88 In comparison with the Orthodoxy of Eastern Europe, Frankfort, or even East London, this religious attitude may appear lax and unobservant. But there is a significant contrast with what was happening in the Jewish community, of similar origins, in America at the same period. There, a rise in social status, a move from the original Jewish quarter to a wealthier area, brought a far more radical change in religious practice. 'The ranks of Reform Judaism swelled, not only because of its principles, but because of the natural human tendency to associate with a relatively high status group. Social status and Reform, it seemed, went together, and many thought that the first was the consequence of the second.'89 In Milwaukee, to take one example, when members of the still mainly traditional congregation B'nai Jeshurun moved to the fashionable East Side in 1869, their first step was to organise a Reform Synagogue, in which the following year the wearing of hats during religious services was prohibited by regulation.90 When a London Jew in 1866 or 1870 moved to the north or north-west of London, his main concern was the distance he would have to walk to synagogue. 'In a climate in which a bright sky is not infrequently the harbinger of a storm close at hand and in which numerous days mark what Lord Palmer ston happily styled "the severity of an English summer" ... it becomes a matter of difficulty? sometimes almost of impossibility?at others at least a proof of some personal courage, for any except the hearty and robust to undertake a walk of miles to reach and return from a synagogue.'91 In 1871, the Jews of St. John's Wood, 'apart from a few who manage to get to Portland Street, all have to walk at least three miles to Bayswater'.92 In 1872, Michael Henry commiserates with the residents of Kensington, who live south of 'the unsheltered Park, which cannot readily be crossed on Sabbaths and Holydays, except in positively fine weather'.93 But the remedy suggested was not to permit riding on Sabbaths and Holydays but to found suburban synagogues. This was done; and they were generally traditional congregations of Orthodox ritual. The attempt to found a Reform congregation for the scattered residents of Glapham and Brixton in 1874 had failed by 1877.94 A complete study of why Anglo-Jewry and American Jewry took such different paths in the formative years between 1860 and 1880 would answer many questions about the character and subsequent development of the two communities. This is not the place to undertake such a study. It is sufficient to record that there were these differences; and that when Jews of the first area of settlement in London moved into suburbia they did not, by and large, abandon the Orthodox fold for Reform. They established synagogues of Orthodox ritual, which set the pattern for religious observance in the suburbs; and these were joined in due course by the new genera? tion of immigrants when they in turn moved from the first to the second area of settlement. In 1902-1903, the Daily News carried out a careful census of the attendants at places of worship in London. This included a census of attendance at synagogue on the first day of Passover 1903 (which coincided with Easter Sunday). It provides interesting material for comparison of synagogue attendances in different areas. Of the total of 26,612 attend? ants, 60% were in synagogues in the City or East London and 40% in the West End and suburbs. If we take the number of male attendants?a fairer basis, since it would be more difficult for servantless housewives to attend?68% of the attendants were in the east, 32 % elsewhere. The census listed attend? ance at nearly 40 places of worship in the City and East End with over 10,000 male wor? shippers. If we assume that perhaps 50 small minyanim with 20 male attendants each were not recorded, this would not materially alter</page><page sequence="20">The Rise of Jewish Suburbia 95 the proportions between the City and suburbs. While, as I have said, the distribution of the Jewish population between the East End and the suburbs in 1904 cannot be given precisely, the proportion must have been roughly two thirds to one-third, as in 1914; this was about the same proportion as that of worshippers. In other words, the ratio of male synagogue attendants of the population on the first day of Passover 1903 was about the same for the suburbs as for the East End, even though the latter was the stronghold of Orthodoxy among the recent immigrants. Within the suburbs themselves, it is possible to discern some patterns of attendance. In the western area, both Bayswater and New West End synagogues had more male attendants than male seat holders (389 attendants, 352 seat-holders, and 328 attendants, 314 seat-holders respectively). In the Highbury/Canonbury area, the ratios were lower: about four attendants to five male seat-holders (89% at Poets Road, 79% at Lofting Road); and in North-West London the figures were slightly lower still (77% at Hampstead, 75% at St. John's Wood). As might be expected, these suburban con? gregations had high ratios of female attendants to males, e.g., at St. John's Wood 233 women to 236 men or at New West End 304 women to 328 men. By contrast, of course, the congrega? tions in East London, with immense attend? ances of men, had hardly any women present. The Great Synagogue, with 1,021 male attendants and 427 children up to 15, had only 155 women; the Mahzike Hadath, with 1,217 men and 438 children, had only 89 women.95 These figures reflect the social and economic differences between the communities in the areas of first and second or third settle? ment; and it is significant that the congrega? tions of Hackney follow the pattern of the East End (which was that of Eastern Europe), rather than that of the other suburbs. Careful study of these and other data would, I am sure, throw more light on the social and religious life of the different suburbs, and the way in which they differed from conditions in East London. Far more research is needed. For instance, we need to know more about the actual pattern of movement. In some cases, Jews moved direct from the East End to a suburb, even to one of relatively high social and financial status. In other cases, the move was by stages, from the area of first to second settlement, and then to one of third settlement. A study of individual family histories would throw much light on this topic. Another subject worthy of investigation is the length of the life cycle of a Jewish residential suburb. If we can look to a period longer than that which I have taken in this study and go beyond 1914, there is clearly a cycle of rise, peak, and decline in the fortunes of any Jewish suburban com? munity; although a residential area may come back again into favour and have a second flowering. The period to 1914 does not provide sufficient scope to follow the life-cycle of the suburban community, except perhaps that in the Barnbury area, though this does suggest that a period of as short as 50 years may be the length of an individual cycle. In this lecture, I have not been able to do more than sketch in the framework of the rise of Jewish suburbia in London between 1830 and 1914, and to indicate the general factors which shaped it. I have also tried to indicate the potentialities of techniques?statistical, pictorial, and cartographic?which are in use in other fields and which should be used more in the study of Jewish social history. I can only hope this will lead others to continue this line of research into Jewish suburbia and to under? take it in depth. For it is time that we broadened our field of study, from over-concentration on the Jewish area of mass settlement, to study the suburban communities. It is one for which members of this Society bear a special responsi? bility. First, because, as I have shown, there are many of the founder-members of this Society who are members of such communities. Second, because so many of us personally were brought up in suburbia. We should not neglect our origins. In the context of recent Anglo-Jewish history, I would suggest that to study the history of the Jewish suburb is to fulfil the injunction of Isaiah: 'Look to the rock from which ye were hewn' (Is. Ii. 1). %* This paper was delivered by Dr. Lipman as his Presidential Address on 16 November 1966.</page><page sequence="21">96 Vivian D. Lipman APPENDIX I United Synagogue?Statistics of Male Seatholders Synagogue 1875 1876 1877 1878 1879 1880 1881 1882 1883 1884 1885 1886 1887 Great Hambro' New Bayswater Central Borough St. John's Wood East London North London New West End Dalston 449 132 370 330 396 178 441 154 367 335 412 184 53 439 169 366 335 408 185 57 221 430 183 361 337 367 179 403 160 349 309 383 170 400 162 358 318 380 170 61 65 79 231 224 227 247 252 396 166 350 323 369 177 233 254 382 181 333 317 340 173 382 166 304 323 343 170 386 161 311 320 335 173 380 157 337 350 340 173 402 144 325 351 318 167 407 120 331 354 321 172 150 163 184 233 234 237 263 271 265 192 216 225 237 240 237 226 205 195 179 202 201 207 247 248 251 251 251 268 277 Synagogue 1888 1889 1890 1891 1892 Great 410 440 449 450 454 Hambro' 119 102 102 96 91 New 324 307 294 301 276 Bayswater 358 373 377 377 369 Central 320 321 334 330 323 Borough 176 172 152 157 155 St. John's Wood 242 247 298 317 304 East London 242 254 272 287 288 North London 191 178 163 176 186 New West End 253 258 260 291 254 Dalston 279 279 269 285 306 Hammersmith 57 83 93 Hampstead 141 South Hackney 1893 1894 1895 1896 1897 1898 1899 1900 450 443 443 443 441 444 447 459 83 76 106 96 72 66 166 199 273 308 316 303 311 318 318 318 354 353 359 365 368 373 366 365 312 312 328 341 359 347 355 355 153 167 162 168 165 162 167 167 309 318 334 349 358 357 373 373 294 305 306 313 327 324 341 345 176 170 181 170 195 197 219 235 231 266 279 306 307 312 319 322 313 333 323 329 341 361 365 365 107 112 117 134 150 156 164 175 167 190 213 249 275 331 359 384 155 192 226 252 Synagogue 1901 1902 1903 1904 1905 Great 449 437 433 422 419 Hambro' 203 200 206 204 202 New 318 302 281 272 254 Bayswater 372 363 352 358 346 Central 356 350 358 365 363 Borough 167 178 186 180 176 St. John's Wood 382 378 316 316 316 East London 347 353 353 322 338 North London 214 187 178 189 175 New West End 316 320 314 319 317 Dalston 351 361 341 345 345 Hammersmith 197 211 218 196 215 Hampstead 442 464 469 477 480 South Hackney 286 354 353 343 337 Stoke Newington 221 266 307 Brondesbury 170 Brixton 1906 1907 1908 1909 1910 1911 1912 1913 405 409 412 413 410 405 439 434 199 186 190 183 212 216 220 217 250 228 219 216 204 197 328 316 302 290 306 321 331 332 359 348 362 375 380 380 384 400 180 165 166 178 177 176 188 179 315 313 317 317 317 317 317 347 336 315 339 332 340 346 342 328 180 185 189 181 235 267 267 267 317 317 317 314 317 317 304 305 336 324 345 340 368 368 362 365 220 225 231 269 295 331 355 345 482 486 485 487 486 487 487 487 341 339 331 338 352 349 353 353 317 331 366 404 434 434 455 457 204 242 264 277 316 342 376 412 160</page><page sequence="22">The Rise of Jewish Suburbia cd . 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Mudie-Smith, 1904, pp. 265-266) Attendance on First Day of Passover (Easter Sunday) District Synagogue Male Female Children (up to 15) Stepney: City: St. Pancras: Hampstead : Westminster: Stoke Newington: St. Marylebone: Islington: Hackney: Brick Lane 1,217 89 438 Sly Street, Cannon Street Road 116 17 53 Scarborough Street 82 11 47 St. Mary Street 83 2 31 179 Hanbury Street 54 15 57 Glory of Jacob, Fieldgate Street 107 5 81 Limehouse, 236 Burdett Street 64 8 27 192 Whitechapel Road 91 16 26 Wilkes Street 154 16 133 Lodz, Davis Mansions 71 5 30 Sandys Row, Spitalfields 310 40 121 113 New Road 271 12 139 Gun Street, Spitalfields 82 10 53 Greenfield Street 329 36 86 Fashion Street 134 24 61 Kiever, New Court 157 2 61 29 Fournier Street 80 35 26 45 Commercial Road 150 26 55 Booth Street 207 22 136 Old Montague Street 150 61 59 Fieldgate Street 502 48 171 Dunk Street 145 29 50 Cannon Street Road 547 36 503 Peace and Tranquillity, Buckle Street 47 - - Vine Court 321 22 26 Old Castle Street 270 51 130 Great Garden Street 409 188 219 Great Alie Street 172 14 80 18 Princelet Street 189 37 64 16 Princelet Street 200 30 40 German, Spital Square 187 33 122 East London, Stepney Green 649 92 236 Artillery Street 198 21 139 Hambro', Union Street 214 53 62 Great 1,021 155 427 Bevis Marks 544 43 226 New, Great St. Helen's 754 261 55 Polish, Cutler Street 52 - 12 Caversham Road 48 32 72 West End Lane 361 317 220 St. Alban's Place 155 34 187 21 Maiden Lane 26 18 25 Green's Court, Golden Square 120 34 100 Princess Road 108 152 83 Berkeley Street 627 320 164 Gt. Portland Street 525 210 307 St. John's Wood 236 233 153 39 Mildmay Park 53 30 13 Lofting Road 141 74 60 Poet's Road, Highbury 306 275 193 Devonshire Road 228 74 257 Wellington Road, Dalston 92 16 68 Jews'Home, Well Street 25 23 Birkbeck Road, Dalston 227 79 185 Total 1,744 186 140 116 126 193 99 133 303 106 471 422 145 451 219 220 141 231 365 270 721 224 1,086 47 369 451 816 266 290 270 342 977 358 329 1,603 813 1,070 64 152 898 376 69 254 343 1,111 1,042 622 96 275 774 559 176 48 491</page><page sequence="26">The Rise of Jewish Suburbia District Paddington : Southwark : Hammersmith: Kensington: Woolwich : Poplar: Synagogue Lauderdale Road Chichester Place (Bayswater) St. Petersburg!* Place (New West End) Vowler Street (Borough) Brook Green Kensington Park Road (Notting Hill) Royal Artillery Rooms East India Road East Ham and Manor Park Forest Gate, West Ham Walthamstow Male Female Children (up to 15) 62 85 156 389 328 116 127 224 34 28 57 42 48 113 274 304 63 78 37 1 16 1 2 105 129 83 96 12 43 39 25 22 101 Total 331 758 737 308 288 357 46 72 112 68 72 NOTES 1 My attention was drawn to this notice by a note in Mr. I. Finestein's paper on Anglo-Jewish opinion during the struggle for Emancipation, Trans. J.H.S.E., XX, p. 128. 2 See his advertisement in the Voice of Jacob, 15 September 1843. 3 Voice of Jacob, 17 March 1843. See also letter from Saul Myers, ibid., 31 March 1843. 4 For the classical exposition of the ghetto* in a modern industrial city see Louis Wirth's study of Chicago, The Ghetto (University of Chicago Press, 1928 and 1956). For an analysis of the areas of first, second, and third settlement in their religious significance see Marshall Sklare, Conservative Judaism (Free Press, Glencoe, Illinois, 1952). 5 H. J. Dyos, Victorian Camberwell (Leicester, 1961), p. 22. 6 Peter Hall, The World Cities (World Univer? sity Library, 1966), p. 197. 7 Around about 1850, judging by the evidence of contemporary novels, a more precise criterion of upper middle class status might be the keeping of four or more servants, with at least one man? servant. But even for this period the three-servant test seems to work reasonably well on the samples of Jewish returns which I have examined in the 1841 and 1851 Censuses. 8 For Booth's classification by income, see London Life and Labour, Vol. I, p. 33, and for the statistics, indicating that the middle and upper classes comprised 17*8% of the estimated London population in 1889, see final volume, p. 9. For estimates of working-class earnings in the 1880 1905 period, see the present writer's Social History of the Jews in England, pp. 108-112. For changes in the value of money from 1850 to 1950, see the present writer's Century of Social Service, p. 294. 9 M. Robbins, Middlesex, p. 172. 10 Richmond was described by John Macky in 1714 as 'the ordinary summer residence of the richest Jews, some of whom have pleasant seats here.' (A Journey through England.) 11 See R. Daiches-Dubens, 'Eighteenth-Century Anglo-Jewry in and around Richmond, Surrey', Trans. J.H.S.E. XVIII, pp. 143-169. 12 Rural Rides, 10 August 1823. 13 Cecil Roth, 'The First Jew in Hampstead', in Essays and Portraits in Anglo-Jewish History (Phila? delphia, 1962), p. 243. The Keyser family, with their dependants, including a teacher, appear to have mustered a minyan for services (ibid., p. 248.) 14 Cecil Roth, 'The First Jew in Hampstead', loc. cit. 15 E.g., Alex Jacobs, Emmanuel Lyons (sub? scribers to David Levi's Fast Day Services in 1793); Aaron Nunes Pereira (died 1769, Gentlemen's Magazine, 'worth ?100,000'). There is also the special case of Baron d'Aguilar, of Starvation Farm. For him and Dr. Sequeira (who lived in a house in Barnsbury Place, opposite Tyndale Place and Hornsey Row), see S. Lewis, History of Islington (1842), pp. 168, 354. 16 See Hannah Cohen, Changing Faces, pp. 3ff. 17 Rogue's Progress: The Autobiography of 'Lord Chief Baron' Nicholson, ed. by John L. Bradbury, 1965. 18 I have noted at least ten: Benjamin Lara, Joseph Montefiore, J. Sequeira, jun., in 1770 (con? tributors to A. Alexander's Service for Passover); Jessurun Alvarez, of Mare Street, D. Israel Brandon, Da Costa, of Mare Street, Moses Alexander (died 1775), Samuel da Costa (died 1777), D. Baruch Lousada (died 1769), Moses Lamego (died 1759), from the Gentlemen's Magazine. 19 Lucien Wolf, Essays in Jewish History (ed. C. Roth), p. 277. 20 He was resident at 20 Spital Square in 1818 and the house was vacant in 1825 (Survey of London, XXVII, p. 64). 21 T. C. Barker and M. Robbins, History of London Transport, Vol. I, p. xxv. 22 See ibid., map on pp. 8?9; and in T. W. Freeman, The Conurbations of Great Britain, the maps on p. 28 showing the built-up area in 1740, 1786, and 1823. 23 J. T. Coppock and Hugh C. Prince, Greater London, p. 29. 24 Ibid., table on p. 34. See also the maps in Barker and Robbins, op. cit., pp. xxviii-xxix, for 1845, 1860, 1880, and 1900. For a map of London's built-up area in 1847, see Freeman, op. cit., p. 55.</page><page sequence="27">102 Vivian D. Lipman 25 For a case in 1820 of two attorneys in the same office who walked from Islington and Wal worth respectively, see Times, 30 September 1938, quoted by R. J. Mitchell and M. D. R. Leys, A History of London Life, p. 280. 26 Barker and Robbins, op. cit., pp. 5, 31. 27 Op. cit., p. 58. 28 Ibid., p. 36. 29 For instance, the Mocattas had settled in this area by 1841: Abraham in Woburn Place, Abraham junior (father of Frederick David) in Endsleigh Street, Aaron in Burton Crescent, David (the architect) in Brunswick Square, and his father, Moses, in Russell Square. 30 Modern London (published by John Murray, 1851), pp. x, xi; Handbook to London (published by Ingram, Cooke, 1855), p. 8. 31 The area east of Tavistock Square (e.g., Burton Street, Burton Crescent?now called Cartwright Gardens) was regarded as inferior to the Bloomsbury squares to the west. Although built by James Burton on a lease obtained in 1807, it was criticised by contemporaries as shoddily built, 'presenting an attractive exterior, which Parker's stucco, coloured bricks and balconies, accomplish; and a fashionable arrangement of rooms on the principal floors, embellished by the paper hanger, and a few flimsy marble chimney-pieces are the attraction of the interior . . . and to this finery everything out of sight is sacrificed'. John White, Some Account of the Proposed Improvement of the Western Parts of London (1815), Appendix III (xxvii), quoting Nash (cited by Hugh C. Prince, in Greater London (ed. J. T. Coppock and Hugh C. Prince), p. 86). 32 The Montefiores and Rothschilds had already settled near the Park; the Goldsmids also clustered in this area: Francis Henry in Manchester Square, Aaron Asher in Dorset Square, Moses in Dorset Place. See distribution of Anglo-Jewry in 1841' in Jewish Chronicle, 17 November 1911. 33 Jewish Chronicle, 29 March 1872. I am in? debted to Mr. J. M. Shaftesley for this and very many other references to the Jewish Chronicle in this period. 34 V. D. Lipman, 'Social Topography of a London Congregation: The Bayswater Synagogue 1863-1963', Jewish Journal of Sociology, Vol. VI (1964), p. 71. 35 See Report of the United Synagogue for 1912, p. 4, where it is stated that there were classes with 33 children on the roll and services were well attended on the high Holydays. 36 It is likely, however, that a number of the members of this congregation in the early days were local traders, rather than commuters. This was certainly true of the founders, one of whom had a clothing business in King Street, Hammersmith, another of whom was a furniture dealer in Hammer? smith Road, and a third a dentist in King Street; another was a master at St. Paul's School. See M. Adler, The History of the Hammersmith Synagogue (1950). 37 Portsdown Road (now Randolph Avenue), Warrington Crescent, Randolph Crescent, Clifton Road, and Clifton Gardens were completed by about 1870; Elgin Avenue and Lauderdale Road were not filled with more modern, smaller, non basement houses and blocks of flats till about 1900. 38 In 1893-1894, the districts of J.H.S. members were: Maida Vale 34, north side of Park 19, Hampstead/St. John's Wood 26, far north-west (Kilburn and Brondesbury) two, North London eight, East End or City four. In 1905, out of 154 addresses, only 20 were in Maida Vale, 31 on the north side of the Park, 23 in Hampstead/St. John's Wood, three in the far north-west, and seven in North London. 39 Dr. Phillips, the principal character?he can hardly be called the hero?lives in Portsdown Road, other characters in Northwick Place and in Sutherland Avenue. 40 Cunningham Mansions was built in 1892; Aberdeen and Blomfield Courts in 1903; Biddulph Mansions in 1907; Delaware Mansions in 1908. 41 Liverpool Road Terraces, 1818, 1822, 1834; Cloudesley Square, 1825; Lonsdale Square, 1824 1825. The area east of Liverpool Road was laid out between 1835 and 1840 (Milner and Gibson Squares). See N. Pevsner, London Outside the Cities of London and Westminster, pp. 225ff. 42 Jewish Chronicle, 12 April 1872. 43 Ibid., 20 January 1860. *A Ibid., 5 January 1866. 45 Ibid., 23 September 1864. 46 Ibid., 22 February 1867. 47 Ibid., 29 March 1872. 48 H. P. Clunn, The Face of London, p. 302. 49 Sylvia's Home Journal, quoted by Alison Adburgham, Shops and Shopping (1964), p. 151. Geoffrey Fletcher poses the question: When did Islington begin to decline socially? He suggests it might be dated from the building of industrial dwellings there, which began about 1865 (The London Nobody Knows, Penguin Edition, p. 55). 50 Jewish Chronicle, 6 August 1875. 51 Ibid., 25 November 1864. 52 London Life and Labour, Series 3, Vol. I, pp. 119-121. 53 Booth Survey, loc. cit., p. 153. 54 'Transitional', in Ghetto Tragedies (published 1893, some of the stories being written in 1888). 55 'They that Walk in Darkness', in Ghetto Tragedies. 56 Ghetto Tragedies. 57 Booth, loc. cit., p. 110. 58 In the 1870s this line had the reputation of being the most technically advanced railway line in the London area and pioneered new techniques of operations and developments, such as the first system of interlocking points, and gas lights in carriages. (See T. C. Barker and R. M. Robbins, History of London Transport, Vol. I, pp. 131-132; R. M. Robbins, The North London Railway (1938), 16-28.)</page><page sequence="28">The Rise of Jewish Suburbia 103 59 John Summerson, Georgian London (1945 edition), p. 159. 60 Murray's Guide, p. xi. 61 N. Pevsner, op. cit., p. 325. 62 He had no money to build on his own account; he could only grant leases for 21 years or his own life; and attempts to get Parliament to break the entail of the Estate failed. 63 Hugh C. Prince, 'North West London 1864 1914', in Coppock and Prince, Greater London, p. 131. 64 Survey of London Life and Labour, Series 3, Vol. 1 (1902), p. 207. 65 Jewish Chronicle, 29 September 1871; see also 13 October 1871 (letter from Goleman Defries, of Belsize Park) 66 Jewish Chronicle, 27 February 1880. 67 Trans. J.H.S.E., XX, 51ff. 68 V. Leff and G. H. Blunden, The Willesden Story, p. 16. 69 The Cheap Trains Act, 1883, compelled the railway companies to offer workmen's fares, as required by the Board of Trade, and was designed 'for further encouraging the migration of the working classes into the suburbs'. 70 Barker and Robbins, History of London Trans? port, Vol. I, p. 263. 71 Uses of Literacy (1957), p. 120. 72 W. Ashworth, Economic History of England, 1870-1939 (1960), p. 240. 73 Conversion of houses into business or indus? trial premises, or demolition for street improve? ments or railways, was responsible for falls in population in central London, e.g.? 1841 1861 1881 1901 (000's) (000's) (000's) (000's) City of London 123 112 51 27 Westminster 229 257 230 183 Holborn 94 94 79 59 Finsbury 113 129 119 101 St. Marylebone 138 162 155 133 74 On the other hand, working-class commuting in the 1890s must not be exaggerated. It was H relatively small in South London, since an inquiry in 1897 showed only 36,557 out of 159,894 workers questioned travelling to work by rail (Dyos, Victorian Suburb, p. 62). 75 See Barker and Robbins, pp. 136-137. 76 The first firm to move was Lebus to Totten? ham in 1903. See Peter Hall, The Industries of London (1962), p. 90. 77 At the 1903 census of attendance on the first day of Passover, there were 112 (57 adult males) recorded as attending at East Ham, 68 (42 males) at West Ham, and 72 (48 males) at Walthamstow. 78 Jewish Chronicle, 22 February 1867. 79 Ibid., 8 May 1874 (advertisement), 2 October 1875, 6 April 1877. 80 M. Rosenbaum, History of the Borough Syna? gogue (1917). 81 Hackney only once exceeded a figure of ?4 per annum and was almost down to the level of the financial contribution of the working-class congregations in East London. 82 'The Rise of the Suburbs', Contemporary Review, Vol. 60 (1890), p. 545. 83 L. Mumford, The City in History (1961), pp. 492-493. 84 For London Jewish upper- and middle-class occupations in the period, see V. D. Lipman, Social History of the Jews in England, pp. 79-80. 85 Jewish Chronicle, 22 February 1867. 86 Ibid., 27 April 1866. 87 Ibid., 23 February 1872. 88 Jewish Chronicle, 23 February 1872. 89 Moshe Davis, The Emergence of Conservative Judaism, p. 152. 90 L. J. Swichkow and L. P. Gartner, The Jews of Milwaukee, p. 51. 91 Jewish Chronicle, 27 April 1866. 92 Ibid., 29 September 1871 (letter from H. L. Cohen). 93 Ibid., 5 April 1872. 94 See Jewish Chronicle, 6 April 1877. 95 R. Mudie Smith (ed.), The Religious Life of London (1904), p. 265.</page></plain_text>