Memories of Brownlow Hill, Liverpool Jewish Gazette, February 23 1968
By a special correspondent (This was the first of Abe Max’s series of articles in the Liverpool Jewish Telegraph.)
My family moved to Brownlow Hill in the spring of 1914 and began an association, which lasted nearly 54 years. Throughout that time some or all the members of our family lived or kept a business establishment on the lower part of the ‘hill’. Sharply divided by the university and the workhouse, on whose site the present Catholic cathedral has been built, immigrants from the ‘der heim’ and their children lived an intensely Jewish life. As if ordained by holy writ, some streets were entirely free from Jewish inhabitants and the few lived in a sort of border street were looked at somewhat askance by the others.
We lived literally on the ‘hill’, occupying the upper portion of a sweet and tobacconist shop belonging to a Mr Cohen, who himself lived over another branch, almost opposite and adjacent to the workhouse itself. From this enormous establishment came a constant stream of men and women dressed in he distinctive garb of the place where they lived. Regulations made in Victorian days saw to it that the clothes were not pawnable and, sad to relate, the ‘charity clothes’ given to Jewish children bore the same mark very apparent to us, other children.
Furniture mill
One entrance to the house was by a wide entry, which provided a convenient short cut between Great Newton Street and the shops on the ‘hill’. I was wakened many times by the noise from Donoff’s mill. This was an establishment catering for the small cabinetmakers who worked in their own homes, all announcing to the world that they were prepared to make furniture ‘for home and export’. When later on my father started on his own account the same optimistic words appeared on a small wooden notice on the wall.
As I remember it, the block of shops between Great Newton Street and Gill Street of the inevitable pub, Cohen’s, Skulnick’s and a drapery shop. Like Mr Cohen, Mr Skulnick had ventured into trade, and his tool shop supplied the Jewish cabinet makers, of whom there were many and who union’s meting place was over Kantrowitz’s a little lower down. This shop was part of the corporate Jewish life of Liverpool and merits more space than the brief reference here. Skulnick’s sold the tools on credit to their customers and provided a service of great value to the economy of cabinetmakers’ lives and to whom every penny counted.
Donoff’s mill was powered by a gas engine, which drove the leather belts whirling on brackets attached to the low roof and branching down to the shaft of the planer or the saw. Not being of the newest, it wheezed and groaned, especially on starting in the morning. The gas engine often mis-fired or raced madly when a belt slipped off a machine and the sorely tried engine pulled away to no purpose. Mr Donoff himself was a kindly man who allowed us youngsters to take away the off cuts or shavings. I regarded him as a rich man for my mother told me that he lived in Bedford Street, which was the ‘Park Lane’ of our community.
Great Newington Street was populated mostly by Jews at the part nearest to Brownlow Hill, and the important persons to me, a young boy of nine, were the Lippa boys and their relatives the Grojinskys. Two Lippa brothers lived close together but in appearance were quite dissimilar. One was a broad, handsome, black-bearded, cheerful individual with a natural leader’s disposition, and the other slight in build and retiring of disposition. Their characteristics continued in their children, one set carrying on the example of their father in much valuable communal work to this day.
The Grojinsky house was a source of much interest to me. Mrs Grojinsky, a widow, kept a boarding house and life was lived there, it seemed to me, at a most luxurious standard with a profusion of food and a constant coming and going of people. She provided dinners for sick people in the nearby Royal Infirmary, and I well remember my delight on being sent there with a meal, which was inevitably contained in an enamelled can filled with delicious lockshen soup and a quarter fowl and vegetables between two plates. Her two sons performed prodigiously at ‘peggy and strides’ at a standard well above my youthful efforts.
Frankie Vaughan
Nearby lived Frankie Vaughan’s grandfather, who eked out a hard living, in common with all around, at upholstering and polishing. Next door to him was the Shechita Board’s poultry yard – a scene of much activity towards weekends and the incoming Shabbat when the chicken meal was obligatory in every Jewish household. The caretaker of the yard was a stern-faced individual and a very pious man, who seemed an entirely different person when he officiated in the shool in the Talmud Torah building in Great Orford Street.
The street also contained the mikve, a much used establishment in those days, Sometimes my mother smuggled me in when she went and I enjoyed the luxury of a nice hot bath. Almost opposite lived Joseph Burman, one of the early Zionist pioneers in Liverpool. He was a rarity in those days – a shool man active in Zionist work. His favourite project was the Jewish Colonial Trust, and trudged many miles collecting coppers from individuals who bought the pound shares by instalments. Many homes showed a framed certificate for a share, and the illustrations on the certificate brought a touch of the East into many households. The shares carried with them a whole sheet of ‘dividend coupons’ and many of them must be lying about in homes to this day. Needless to say no dividend ever ensued but the documents were an impressive sight. Mr.Burman’s example was carried on by his son Mr. Reuben Burman in the twenties and thirties, when Zionism was indeed a dream and had little glamour attached to it.
Most of the children in Great Newton Street attended the ‘Jewish School’ (Hope Place) but I went to ‘Plezzy’, the name by which the Pleasant Street Board School was known. Its student population was at least 70% Jewish. Adjoining it was the Oulton Secondary School and there was perpetual enmity between the ‘colly dogs’ who attended it and us pupils.
Cricket
The headmaster of the ‘Plezzy’ was a Mr. Hallam and other members of the staff included Mr. Ward and Mr. Barton, the latter who will be remembered by many with affection. He looked after cricket, and many old pupils will remember the long trudge to Newsham Park to practice and to play. Great was the excitement when the team reached the knockout competition and played on the athletic ground in Fairfield.
I entered Miss Lee’s class and coming from a private school, where no painting lessons had ever been given was singled out by her after the first session as the worst pupil in that line ever to be in her class.
Among many pupils I recall Ike Robinson, Ike Bernstein, Gesh Frieze, Myers, the brothers Lieberman, whose father made and sold mineral waters and was always patronised by my parents at Pesach time. Also a boy called “Russian”, a recent immigrant from Poland, Shiker Bernstein and his brothers, the Vassermans, Harrises and Finklesteins all from Leander Street. From further afield came the Clumpuses, whose father was, I think, a trousers maker, a boy named Faust from Lord Nelson Street and numerous others.
‘Tinny’ Rubin
My Father was a very religious man and, of course, my religious education was not neglected. My brothers and I were sent to the Talmud Torah cheder in Great Orford Street, which was under the kindly authority of Mr. H. Shereshefsky, aided by Mr. Hershel Cantor, who was also the secretary of the now non-existent Islington Synagogue, and a Mr. R. Rubin who for some reason we nicknamed Tinny Rubin – maybe because he had a red-coloured beard.
He was a somewhat irascible gentleman and I once upset him by throwing a ‘bomb’ through the window of his classroom. A ‘bomb’ was a twisted piece of coloured paper holding some chemical, which, on a hard surface, produced an explosion of no great force. Perhaps it was lucky for me that it was not a ‘stink bomb’ for, on being hauled before the principal for my crime, I was let off with a caution instead of a caning, that mid-mannered man Mr. Shereshefsky not having in his nature to emulate those others rebbes of the period, who laid about liberally.
The outbreak of the 1914-18 war caused an upheaval in the economics of many Jewish households because jobs folded up and ours was no exception. In company with many other cabinet makers my father became out of work, but we were saved from disaster by his being put on war work at the docks converting ships to troop carriers. This steady and for us well-paid work enabled my parents to move to the luxury of a house in the real centre of Jewish life – a street called Shannon Street.
Pawnshop
At the corner of the ‘hill’ itself was Hughes’s the pawnbrokers – an ever-present refuge for those in real financial trouble. On the same side lived Jack Bloomberg, then a strapping young man who drove a pony and trap for Mr. Grey the shipping butcher. Then a Goldstein family, the Needlemans and a Mr. Levin, a mild-mannered pious old gentleman.
On the other side were a man who peddled fish, and was later unfortunate to lose a leg, and a ‘Polisher’, speaking an outlandish sort of Yiddish and intoning prayers till late in the night. Then Needleman’s, the grocery store kept by, I think, a Mrs. Levy; then the dairy owned by, I think, a Mr. Pate, although that might have been the name of the baker adjoining the Talmud Torah and to which a constant procession of children wended their way on Fridays. We were carrying our mother’s bread and cake to be baked for the Sabbath. Many a time I watched with fascinated eyes my mother’s nimble fingers plaiting the loaves, applying egg with a feather, twisting and shaping the ‘kitke’, a narrow piece of dough laid lengthwise across a loaf, or sprinkling caraway seeds on the cake. We were never reluctant to bring back the baking, for on the way the ‘kitke’ rendered succulent by the egg and good baking, somehow disappeared before reaching home.
From Shannon Street downwards one side of Brownlow Hill was the principal Jewish shopping centre. Lansky, the greengrocer: Learman, the butcher: Nossen Ginsburg (a pillar of Islington Synagogue), a general store; Levy, the baker; Lyons, the dairy; Epstein, the grocer; Brodie, the cycle dealer; Bennett’s, the cabinet makers; another butcher; Cohen-Dorman, the baker and grocer; Fineberg, the butcher; Koffman’s, chip shop; Allergant, a tobacconist; and Green, who sold feathers and ‘puch’ to fill cushions, pillows and ‘perenes’ = the eiderdown of ‘der heim’ to be found in every bedroom.
On the other side, from Great Newton Street down to Trowbridge Street was mostly ‘goyisher’ territory, leading to the abattoirs and the hide warehouses. I remember Perris, the fishmonger, who also did a little light carting, and Aranovitch, the ‘Vursht Macher’, living in Gill Street, and some other Jews at the better end of Pembroke Place.
On the ‘hill’ itself was situated, going down, Landy, the chandler; Axelrod, another chandler; Loftus, an upholsterer; Goodman, the butcher; Greenbergs and Goldbergs, both boot repairers known as shusters; Bernstein, the barber, who used to ply his trade on the ships; Rosenbergs, the greengrocers; Katzins, the bakers; Pennetts, the tailors’ trimmings shop; Nurock, a wholesale draper’ and, lower down, Chiselsky, the jeweller.
Living together – in each other’s pockets almost – the life of many people on the ‘hill’ was very far from private, and tragedy, farce, comedy and joy were often shared communally. But this is, as the saying goes, is another story. It is sufficient for me if these random recollections have invoked similar memories in others and brought a little of a life lived there that is gone for ever.