The seventh in the series of articles written by Abe Max
Next door to the workhouse in Brownlow Hill was Cohen’s the tobacconist, and lower down the surgery of Dr. M. B. Strock, a mid-European Jew with a cosmopolitan air and outlook. Though his knowledge of Yiddish was scanty, still being one of the ‘unzerer’, he had a large local clientele visiting his surgery at the orner of Duckenfield Street. After Narefsky’s, the sweet shop, came Great Orford Street, with Tower’s, a firm supplying chemicals and instruments to the university, on the corner.
A large number of our people were householders in Great Orford Street and my father plied his trade as cabinetmaker there at No.4, a double fronted house, which had formerly been a bakery. Others in the same trade were Mr. Finklestein, J. Libman, the wood bedstead maker, Mr. Lipps and Osher Silver – a man much occupied in charitable society work and tontines.
Kingpin
The economy of those days, when incomes were low and irregular, necessitated membership of at least one tontine. The weekly payments entitled a member to an annual dividend, usually at Pesach, and very welcome it was to pay for the extra food and incidentals of Yom Tov. There were other benefits in cases of sickness, death and so on, absolute necessities to a family in the days before the advent of the Welfare State. The only other standby in cases of illness – a calamity for a workingman – was the ‘Lloyd George’ scheme of insurance, the stamped-up card giving the holder a cash benefit and a free doctor.
To obtain increased benefits, cardholders joined together in Approved Societies, the gross vlue of the stamps providing extra entitlements. The kingpin of a Jewish approved society or tontine was the secretary, and one such, a Mr. Rovensky, lived in Great Orford Street, close to his relatives the Smolenskys. To the secretary came all and sundry with their forms to fill in, documents to unravel and other such contacts with local authorities and the Government. The children were still small and at school, so there was only the secretary to give aid and counsel in dealing with an alien world to which our parents still attributed some of the evils encountered by them in Eastern Europe.
Only solicitor
When the courts of law had to be used, one went to the only solicitor of our faith then practising – Herbert J. Davis. Later on, when I became a secretary while still living ‘on the Hill’, the practice still obtained and several visits were made by me to our only Jewish J. P., Mr. Julius Jacobs, with naturalisation papers and suchlike. He was the owner of a large tailoring shop facing Lewis’s and could be seen very often standing in the doorway of his emporium, cigar in mouth, a beard trimmed in the style of Edward the Seventh and always a carnation in the button-hole of his lapel.
Some years later Alfred Urding became a councillor for the Netherfield ward. He was the uncle of Abe, Sam and Beattie Barnett, and his smallwares warehouse in Islington was a convenient centre for members of our community to bring their forms to be signed.
Joseph Tenser
The secretary who did most for the working class of our community in those days was Joseph Tenser, of 60 Peach Street. He was a man who went far beyond his official duties to help his members, or indeed anyone who called on him. Not a strong man, he wore himself out in the service of the community doing that patient unspectacular type of work hardly ever appreciated at the time.
A final memory of the ‘Hill’ area brings to mind Goldstein, a sopher (scribe), Jacobs, also a sopher, Mrs Winestein, the ‘hinner’ ; the ‘Shlumperkee’, an unfortunate woman unable to throw off a past tragedy; the Cohens and the Rosensteins, next door neighbours; Kesslers and Clumpus, tailors,; the Goodstones and others in Bittern Street and the Freemans, Kosows, Kollacks and Colemans, all tailors in Clarence Street. So to Russel Street, where was situated the shool to which later became, by amalgamation, the Devon Street minyan.
Devonites
Devon Street! If ever a Liverpool Louis Golding were to write a kind of Magnolia Street and five Silver Daughters of a street then this would be the one to choose, and indeed the histories of the distaff side of Devon Street would make a far more interesting story than the male! The Devonites had an idiom and accent peculiarly their own, and when Chanuch Shenofsky recounted an episode the Yiddish had vowels that were broader and richer than those of the ordinary Litvak. Not quite the high nasal sing-song of the true Polisher but with an intonation and sounding reminiscent of our Eastern origin. When Morris Mass discoused it was more of a homily than an opinion.
Messers. Waterman, Crystal, Silverman and others would settle back with the critical yet rapt attention of the villagers of the Eastern Khan listening to an itinerant storyteller and they were seldom disappointed. This trait of speech ahs been passed on to the next generation and recently I listened with delight to a scion of Devon street telling a story in half Yiddish and half English with a number of whereases and ‘tzum byeshpills’ before coming to the well seen point!
Pious and god fearing, the ‘balabattim’ of Devon street had their centre of gravity around the shool, which was over Mass’s grocery shop and they and their womenfolk saw to it that their children received an education and tradition of yiddishkeit. The Jewish nation throws off almost carelessly sons and daughters in many fields, and Devon Street certainly has its share of scientists, musicians, lawyers and even a reputed millionaire, Barenbaum, in the USA!
Torah procession
The shool was entered by a narrow doorway and, after a right turn up the steps to the first floor and up again to the ladies gallery. Here was the nearest approach to life in ‘der heim’ and the atmosphere was more joyous and less inhibited than at Islington shool round the corner. I can imagine these ‘balabattim’ as part of a chevra in ‘Russland’ with their own rebbe – maybe not a goan so deeply versed in Gemara or ‘pilpul’ – but certainly the leader of a very close flock. No doubt the following, among other songs, would have been heard by many of them I ntheir boyhood days.
Shah! Shtill! Mach nisht kein gerrider!
Der Rebbe gayte shayne tantzen vidder.
Shah; Shtill! Mach nisht kein gevalt!
De Rebbe gayte shayne tantzen balt!
Un as der Rebbe tanzt
Shoklen zach der vent
Un de Chassidimlach
Patchen mit der hent
Shah! Shtill! Mach nisht kein gevalt!
Der Rebbe gayte Shayne tantzen balt!
Hush! Hush! Still not a sound
The Rebbe will soon dance around.
Up and down the room, round and about
While the Chassidimlach
Stamp and shout.
And as the Rebbe dances the four walls shake.
All the Chassidim merriment make and
Clap, clap hands take up the refrain
The Rebbe’s about to dance again!
Shah! Hush! Still!
No uproar
The Rebbe’s about to dance once more!
When the minyan finally closed down and amalgamated with Russell Street Shool, Heschel Cohen led a procession of members who escorted the sifre Torah to their new home. They were carried through the intervening streets under a chuppa, lit up by coloured lights, and only the fertile brain of the leader could have thought up the idea of asking the chief constable for an escort of mouted police! A pity it was refused.
Though living a little out of the area, I remember helping my mother with her shopping from Winesteins – a parlour grocery shop near Lowe’s engineering works. Mass’s on the corner of Falkland Street and Devon Street, was the principal shopping centre and many a half pound of ‘hobbener gritz’ was weighed out by Dolly and Minnie, who helped their mother – widowed early – in the shop. Silverstone the baker – not to be confused with Silverston the cabinet maker – was lower down and there was no problem about kosher milk. Mr Silverman saw to that. Meat was obtained from Hershel Polak’s little shop in Gildart Street.
Sabbath peace
On a warm summer’s Shabbos afternoon the womenfolk would sit on the front steps at peace with the world, mind and body relaxed. The menfolk fed, the bay asleep, the older children in Shaw Street Park and all was serene. The stiffly starched curtains behind the parlour window, snow white and folded back, were held in place by a coloured cord or a brass band. In the space between could be seen the yellow mottled bamboo table with a shelf below the top on which rested the well-nourished aspidistra with its shiny green leaves.
At the back of the room, facing the window, stood the sideboard from whose mirrored back, supported by carved or fluted wooden pillars, came a gleam of light reflecting the afternoon sun. On the polished sideboard top, were a coloured runner and the family photos in wooden frames, plus a pair of tall rose-painted vases. The mantel board over the fireplace often held a three-piece clock set or a pair of matching figures cast from some heavt metal, in the forms of a horse and mounted rider wielding a lance.
On the table in the centre was a coloured plush green cloth bordered with a bobbled fringe, and in the remaining cramped space the sofa, two armchairs and the four small chairs of a seven-piece suite. Enclosing the black enamelled hearth was a brass or bronze coloured kerb and inside it the companion set of well-polished fire irons. On a shelf behind the door fanlight could be seen a china ornament or maybe the door itself was embellished with a well-kept brass knob, knocker and letter box flap.
So was enjoyed for a few fleeting moments the dying Shabbos till the men came back from shool and the intoning of Havdala ushered in once again, the vochodiker problems of work and ‘cheiyuneh’. To the Havdala words of ‘Hamavdil bayne kaydesh l’chayle’, my mother used to add: ‘Un de voss hot der gelt in keshenneh, yennem iz vayle!’
Glassman’s
The neighbourhood was a furniture making centre and the following persons connected with it come to mind. Roberts der Bord, Big Sol Blankstone, Levy fun Fairfield der whitewood maker, Cohen der carver, Duvvid Davies the upholsterer, Armsdorff the carver, and ‘Blankshtaynes’ (Blankstone) the cabinet works in Islington. To work at this works was regarded a status symbol in the trade as Mark Balnkstone employed only top class men and paid then a penny more an hour, a considerable increase in those days.
Glassman’s in Islington was another cabinet works and in the same street were to be found Kaufman and Huglin, upholsterers; Freeman, cabinetmakers; and Cohen, the upholsterers’ warehouseman. Cabinetmakers obtained their fittings and supplies from Louis Viner and Grossman in Kempston Street, and Slott’s in Islington. The latter gentleman also owned lodging houses for workingmen over his shop and in Shaw Street nearby.
Memory also recalls Crugman, the polisher; Sill’s mill; the Cooklins; Dubitsky and Epstein in Falkland Street; Rothstein and Peters, who sold ‘dunnage timber’ ( note: timber used as packaging to chock, support and distribute the weight of cargos); the Cherniavskys and the Shenofskys; Fisher; Radam; Dansky; and Elterman, the tailor; next door to Mass’s the grocers.
The whole area is now being dismembered and while, no doubt, all is coloured with the rosy glow of nostalgia it is with a pang that one sees a past vanishing for ever