This was the sixth in the series of articles that Abe Max wrote for the Liverpool Jewish Gazette under The Changing Years title. June 13 1969
Dr Fox’s Hebrew Higher Grade School, which I attended, was an original, and somewhat before its time, attempt to combine secular education with the now common Ivrit b’Ivrit method of teaching Hebrew. Founded and supported by early local Zionists, it had a strong nationalistic bent and met the usual opposition of some shool men of those days who thought that it was an unforgivable sin to use Hebrew in secular conversation. Though short-lived, it gave its pupils the ‘guinea stamp’ of an education in Jewish values which has endured to this day in us.
The school then occupied premises in West Derby Street, which were later demolished to make way for a council school built by Liverpool Education Committee. The playground was a long garden, opening on to Little Woolton Street. Together with Sherdley Street, Crown Street and Crown Square, it formed an enclave predominantly Jewish in character.
In Little Woolton Street was situated the surgery of the ‘six penny doctor’. Illness was a financial calamity in the straitened circumstances of those days and the usual visiting fee of a shilling was a major item even though it included ‘the bottle’ made up by him. So the six penny medico was very well patronised.
Frock coated doctor
Nevertheless the one everyone swore by was Dr. M. Lowenthal, who later retired to South Africa. Tall, lean and dressed in a long frock coat with wide black silk lapels, he always arrived in a hansom cab, his head covered by a silk hat and his dark lean face inscrutable looking. He used to complain despairingly to his Jewish patients groaning with dyspepsia that “You’ll eat yourselves to death with all that kartoffel (?latkes?), gribbenes, helzells and hinnisher schmaltz.”
A hansom cab in those days was a pretty sight, the passenger sitting in the high, narrow leather button upholstered body looking out of the glass-covered front and the driver sitting on his outside seat managing the horse by means of a long pair of reins and the occasional flick of the whip. The whole thing seemed to go with a dash heightened by the jingle of the harness, the brilliance of the brasses and the clip-clop of the spirited horse between the black lacquer painted shafts.
How many readers remember Barnett the barber in Crown Street and the small newsagents ‘up the steps’ nearby? The latter sold the ‘Police Gazette’ and displayed it on a line stretched across the back of the window. I awaited eagerly the sight of every new edition, for the paper was filled mainly with black and white crude illustrations of murdered victims and other lurid details. There was plenty of gore splashed about, villains with razor in hand, bodies decapitated and so on.
Memory brings to mind the existence then and for some years later – say 1913 to 1923 – in West Derby Street such establishments as the following. Winestein, wholesaler and retailer in eggs and dairy produce; Ramm, Israels, Radam, Ratoff, Shineberg and Abrahams – all cabinetmakers; Sapero, upholsterer; Sholl, tailor; Bernstein, baker; Marcus, grocer; Cohen, watch repairer; and Siev, a general dealer. The last named was rather a character with whom we youngsters used to play ‘shoch’ – chess – on the counter of his rather dark shop.
Rogansky the rebbe
Some years later I received instruction from the quiet, saintly man, Mr. Rogansky, who had a cheder in Crown Street and there are no doubt some readers who obtained similar tuition at Golomberg’s in Sherdley Street. Mrs Golomberg was a ‘sheytelmacher’ - a wig maker – and a daughter became a well known hairdresser in later years.
Dr Fox’s school moved to 64 Bedford Street, near the old Zionist hall and the staff was composed of the principal, his sister Sophie, his daughters Clara and Julie and Mr Garrity. The last named was a gifted and eccentric teacher of general subjects with a facility for training pupils to pass the ‘scholarship’, which gave free entry to a grammar school. One of his mathematical short cuts enabled me to gain a place a place when I sat the examination. The school was co-educational and took in boarders from North Wales, but it was a struggle for the gifted Dr. Fox and increasing lack of support forced its closure.
While living in Cecil Street we obtained milk from Dover’s in Prescot Street, whose owner was one of the many milkmen who drove a float containing a large milk churn from which the milk was measured out into the customer’s jug. Orders for milk were delivered in metal cans with wire handles and I helped to take some out on Pesach when the float was not in use, the milk coming direct from the cows in the shippon at the rear of the premises. To go to the dairy with a shippon for milk on the Passover was a common practice and may indeed still be carried on.
Eton collars
Came yomtov and we boys were fitted out at Mr. Kent’s, the outfitter, also in Prescot Street, with the knickerbocker suit of the period. The trousers, which were worn over the knees, quickly tore, subjected as they were to the rough games of the streets. The belted Norfolk jacket and bicycle stockings were for older boys and the usual footwear was lace-up boots – oh the knots we tied in a lace worn through by the metal rimmed eyelets and the three top steel fasteners!
For the summer we wore a cricket shirt, grey shorts of flannel, turn-over stockings and a belt secured by a snake or S clasp. Sartorial elegance was a belt, through the middle of which ran a broad coloured stripe matched by the same colour on the stocking turn-up and a tie to match. Oh the blind eye of parents to whom this Beau Brummell ensemble was of no consequence and cheapness the prime consideration.
A cap was always on the head, for no Jewish boy goes round ‘without a hittel like the shgotsim’, and this was bought at Bodesky’s, the draper in Prescot Street. Here one also obtained the stiff celluloid Eton type collar, whose tabs holding the stud soon broke off on one side, necessitating a repair with a piece of string. Boots for repair were sent to Fishgold’s and what an improver he had to be! Funds were always low and the ‘shuster’ was expected to do the seemingly impossible and use his ingenuity to keep the boot in use. So long as the upper could be made to cling to the sole somehow, a patch, a steel tip, a round rubber heel and a liberal use of beeswax and blacking did the trick.
For a Jewish lad there was always cheder after school hours as well as on Sunday, when we gave many an envious glance at the other children at play.
Cherry wads
The small, cramped houses drove us on the streets for recreation and no doubt many older readers will remember such games as the following: for girls, when they were not helping in the house, going messages or ‘wheeling the carriage’ holding the latest born, there were jacks and ollies, skipping, with the rope turned slowly at first then faster and finally with a cracking burst of speed; hopscotch, the spaces drawn out on the pavement with the lump of chalk with which mam used to whiten the hearthstone; ball games, using the sidewalk and the wall, such as ‘one, two, three, aleeree’; shuttlecock; and occasionally, by grace and favour, a short –lived participation in a boy’s game.
The lads played ton weight; eavy on; no showing of ivory; tick; rounders; cricket against the lamp post with somebody keeping ‘douse’ for the bobby (the lamp post brackets against which the lamplighter leaned his ladder provided a swing when a rope was slung over them and was used by both sexes); peggy, to stride out; football, with a ‘tanner meg’ ball; leap frog; a complicate hopscotch using the road; buttons; catchers’ and leads.
In the season was Diablo, ‘cherry wabs up the spout’, nuts on Pesach, sticking transfers on the hands and arms, spiking an opponent’s peg top, rattles, clappers made from flat rib bones, kites in the park and ‘steeree’ using a home made flat wooden-topped cart on four wheels.
To be able to fit steel wheels with ball bearings instead of the cheap wooden kind gave the proud owner Jaguar status. And we ahd flicking and blowing cigarette cards; collecting sets of them; ‘ollies’, using three holes scraped out in a waste lot, when the ollies were thrown not flicked as in marbles in the park; and, very rarely, exploding fireworks, for our parents ahd little or no interest in the goyishe custom.
Halter’s tunes
Many long hours were spent by me in Islington shul on the Sabbath between the mincha and maariv services, when we played at word games in ‘loshen kodesh’ (Hebrew) or made up comic and often scandalous verses about the chazzan, the shammash and other synagogue worthies.
The Islington synagogue was the premier Orthodox shul in the city. Many of its congregants came from a townlet in ‘der heim’ known as Shisslovitch and they were called the ‘Shisslovitzer ganovim’. Whether this title was merited is not for me to say as my maternal grandparents were from this place too! Many of the shul balabattim were characters in their own right and their names still bore the nomenclature of their village days. For example, Meshaaron Freedman, Nossen Ginsberg, Shepsel Heller, Shmuel Broude and his brother Itchke Broude, Hershel Canter, Isaac dover, Caplan of Erskine Street, Itchke Cohen (not to be confused with his brother Cohen ‘der bedding’) and Yankel Swift. Chazan Halter and his choir sang the services with melodious tunes, often repeated at home by my father and his family.
Brass bedsteads
As the days drew in and the cold weather came on we children began to look round for a likely tin to use as a ‘winter warmer’. The method was to punch some holes in the tin, put in some felt or other slow burning material, ignite it, press on the lid firmly and attach a piece of wire as a long handle. Twirled round the head, it kept aglow and warmed our numbed hands in the winter.
When the long winter nights came in we had supper, said the ‘krishma’ under the vigilant eyes of our parents, took the candle up to bed and pulled the perrener well up to our chins. The perrener, an importation from ‘der heim’ was stuffed with feathers saved after plucking the hen for shabbos. The stalks were then carefully separated and the soft portion was used to fill this very warm if somewhat insanitary bed covering.
The brass bedsteads of those days, with their heavy moulded knobs screwed on to the black japanned legs and the head and foot vertical rails shaped into bobbles and twists, will be remembered by many. On the palliasse, filled with horsehair or straw, was another mattress filled with ‘puch’ and the best bed at least had linen valances tied to the legs and stretched down to the floor.
Supper was often ‘tatez mit sholach’ – spuds in their jackets baked in the oven or on the hob hooked on to the rails of the coal fire grate – and herring rolled in paper and broiled on the hot coals, a feast for the gods to healthy ravenous children!