Kingston upon Hull, on England's East Coast was, by 1750, a major point of entry into Britain for traders and migrants, second only to London for links to the continent. Around then, a few Jews from German and Dutch cities lodged and settled in Hull. Selling jewelry and dealing goods in the thriving port and market town, they maintained contacts with Europe, London, and other, particularly Northern, towns. The small community produced its own institutions and leaders, which were tested by anti-Jewish sentiment, and later by an influx of East-European refugees.
Communal efforts to support the arrival of Jews – mostly bound for America – encouraged some to stay, who then thrived particularly well in retail trades, and grew to be a community of over 2,500. Although probably never more than 1% of the area population, by the end of the twentieth century the Jews of Hull made an impact on the life of the city, and some became known in the broader world. Among the sons and daughters of the Jews of Hull (as well as numerous Lord Mayors and Sheriffs of Hull) were three Fellows of the Royal Society, the founder of the world's largest furniture maker, prominent doctors and lawyers, as well as actress Dame Maureen Lipman. See Notable People below.
Culture As elsewhere, Jews in Hull gathered for Hebrew rites, and to make arrangements for kosher meat, in hastily opened synagogues (see Synagogues, below). The East-European Ashkenazim and Dutch Sephardim Jews intermarried, thus uniting early rival congregations. Family, business and institutional links with Jewish communities in London and other towns were always important. As they were largely excluded from society in Britain as in Europe, the Jews of Hull were for a time mostly poor, and their livelihoods were made via pawnbroking, dealing in valuables, jewelry, and later, silver and gold work, watch and clockmaking, as well as importing goods. Prosperity brought better synagogues, improved access to kosher provisions, and wider charitable, civic and professional activity.
Newcomers fleeing Russian oppression came via North Sea and Baltic ports, skilled as tailors, drapers, cobblers, cabinetmakers, market traders and travelers. Established English and German Jews assisted those struggling in lodgings and terraces near the docks, as tensions and growing families spawned multiple synagogues. Jewish life in Hull came to reflect the restrained Litvak observance and eastern Yiddish of the old Grand Duchy of Lithuania, a culture wiped out by the Tsars, Nazis and Soviets. More refugees were added by two World Wars. The severe Hull Blitz, and the drama of the State of Israel, furthered communal spirit, as did local Jewish entertainers.
Facing acculturation, Hull Jewry has since followed varied observant, assimilated and secular lifestyles, as elsewhere. Like other provincial communities, and North-Eastern ports, career and family have drawn them away into a diaspora, across the UK and abroad. In 2016 the Hull community gathered to celebrate its 250-year history, which is documented in an archive, a key paper, various books,Margoliouth, Moses (1851). The History of the Jews in Great Britain, Volume 3. London: Richard Bentley. p. 134-5. and online resources.
Demography Jewish life in Hull grew in the bustling Old Town, perhaps 40 people in 1793, 60 in 1815, and 200 in 1835, with a few trading out in Beverley, York, Scarborough and Lincolnshire towns. A move west, around the arterial Hessle and Anlaby Roads, and also Beverley Road, centred on Porter Street and the upmarket Coltman Street. The proportion of new young immigrants was always high, from mid-century settling around Osborne Street, growing the community to over 300 by 1851, 550 in 1870, and 2,000 by 1900. These families also progressed out along the same thoroughfares, accelerated by wartime bombing. The old housing and shops of Hull were decimated by the Luftwaffe, even before the era of slum clearance. Motorcars enabled more Jews to reside in the western suburbs outside the City – Anlaby and Kirk Ella, as well as Willerby, Hessle and Ferriby.
After the war Hull-born Jews predominated, the area community peaking at 2,500 to 3,000, including some unlisted at synagogue or census, not counting the small, linked community in Grimsby across the Humber. Jews were barely 1% of the city's population, or the wider suburbs. Assimilation, relocation, and emigration have since taken their toll, most leaving for London, Manchester, Leeds, and Israel, with now 200 or less in the Hull area, mainly older people in recent years.
Early history
Pre-1700 Before the expulsion of 1290, Jewish leaders at Lincoln and York, lent monies to nearby ports Barton-upon-Humber,Latin deed – acquittance by Aaron, the Jew of Lincoln .. to the men of Barton-upon-Humber. Year 1182 http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=add_ch_1250_f001r and Bridlington Priory. Several of their credit agents, are recorded as named Jews of the ports of Grimsby, and Hedon, which is now just outside Hull; and at Beverley, which is in the Hull Valley. The same figures at Lincoln and York at times dealt or took payment in wool, as did the Jew Jacob de Hedon.
Close by, the large wool-producer Meaux Abbey, bought estates indebted to these Jews, and borrowed from them for construction, whilst also developing the Hull river-mouth as a major centre, for wool-merchants from England and Europe. Thus it is plausible that the early development of Hull was funded by Jews. Nevertheless, unlike a community in Newcastle up to the year 1234, nothing is recorded of Jews resident in the early port of Hull.
Oliver Cromwell defended Hull during the English Civil War, before in 1656 starting the resettlement of the Jews in England. Oft-repeated claims of a presence in Hull toward the year 1700, are discounted by scholars as being based on false recollections or forgeries. Recorded communal memory suggests the first settlers in Hull were sometime after 1700.
Settlement The first known arrival is of Israel Benjamin in 1734, claiming to be a convert, who later died in Leeds. Thereafter, at a time of persecution in Europe, it is documented that Jews came into Hull from Germany, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Prussia, Poland and the Baltic, bound for large Northern towns or London, some claiming to be converts to Christianity. Merchants came from other English ports, for Hull's Napoleonic era Naval Prize Court. Traders settled around the Holy Trinity Church marketplace, being in effect legally free in Hull to set up business; Jews ran many stalls and shops there until the late 1960s.
In 1766, Isaac Levy of Church Lane was the first recorded resident, founding one of many dynasties of jewellers and watchmakers, with others soon in the lanes off Marketplace; located there was the equestrian statue of William III, for the 1788 Protestant Accession centenary, decorated with an elegant crown, by Aaron Jacobs, jeweller and silversmith, forbear of synagogue presidents and clockmakers. As some diversified into market bazaars and general trading, there were Jewish barbers (Abraham Levis, 1791), cobblers (Michael Levy, 1812), tailors (Henry Levy, 1812) and cabinet-makers (Henry Meyer, 1826). In 1822 Joseph Levi was a "quil and pencil merchant," and Samuel Lazarus a hatmaker. In 1831 Joseph Jacobs ran a coffee house, and in 1834 Baruchson and Fawcett were importers and dealers in cigars.
Advancement Moses Symons, bullion dealer and watchmaker, was a Navy Agent, and in 1810 a founder member of the Humber Lodge of Freemasons, which later had synagogue president and silversmith Elias Hart as its Master mason.
Philanthropist Bethel Jacobs (1812–69), son and son-in-law to community leaders Israel Jacobs, and Joseph Lyon (see Synagogues), became Master of the Humber Lodge and a Town Councillor, as well as synagogue president. Returned from Leipzig studies to his father's Whitefriargate silversmiths and clockmakers, he oversaw a workshop as polymath and inventor. A charismatic lecturer,Margoliouth, Moses (1851). The History of the Jews in Great Britain, Volume 3. London: Richard Bentley. p. 135 president of Hull Literary & Philosophical Society, and the Mechanics' Institute, he led Hull at the 1851 Great Exhibition. Drawing the 1853 Association for the Advancement of Science to Hull, and after Victoria and Albert stayed at the (to be Royal) Station Hotel in 1854, Bethel became Jeweller to Her Majesty. Later Lieutenant of Hull Volunteer Rifle Corps, and president of Hull's Royal Institution, he founded Hull College of Art in 1861.
Simeon Mosely (1815–88), prominent dental surgeon, was synagogue president, a Town Councillor, captain in the local volunteer brigade, and 1864 founding Worshipful Master of the Kingston Lodge.From Wolkowisk To Wallgate and Other Journeys: A History of the Wigan Jewish Community. Hilary Thomas, p.28 re Mosely family. https://jscn.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Wolkowisk.pdf Longstanding mason Solomon Cohen (1827–1907), Sheffield-born clothier and synagogue president, was a Hull Town Councillor for Marketplace ward from 1870, later an Alderman, chairman of Hull School Board and president of Hull Guardian Society.
The Great Migration
Emigration Victorian England's lack of restriction on refugees saw port arrivals increase, especially after the continental revolutionary unrest of 1848, enabled by the transport revolution of steam-ships and trains. Whilst tens of millions of Jews left mainland Europe between 1850 and 1914 by direct liner to America, the Wilson Line and other shipping companies ensured that over two million trans-migrants of all creeds traversed Hull's docks and railways, and up to a million Grimsby's. This indirect route was not only much cheaper, for those observing strict kosher eating and other tenets, the shorter voyages were also less stressful.
About one in four of Hull's trans-migrants were Jews, destined via Liverpool for New York or Buenos Aires, as well as for the Cape and also British towns. An expanding young population of Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazim was leaving Russia's Pale of Settlement, due to work restrictions, special taxes, and the forced conscription and conversion of boys which was fueling emigration. Murderous anti-Semitic pogroms (riots) after 1881, publicised even in Hull, and famine in 1891–2, further escalated departures from the Russian Empire into the new century.
Travelling to Hull In addition to the hope of a welcoming, gilded "New Jerusalem," emigration was often underpinned by informative correspondence with relatives. Chain migration among Jews—specifically from Lithuanian towns via the Baltic to Northern English port – has been described. Even so, passage to Hull was often booked through unscrupulous agents. Husbands or eldest sons left first, and completed an arduous cross-border journeys by foot, cart, and train, to Hamburg and Bremen, or Baltic ports like Libau and Riga.
Larger vessels on the Baltic traversed the dangerous Kattegat, until in 1895 the Kiel Canal opened, before the journey onward to Hull (or Grimsby, or Goole). Carrying a little kosher food, such as herring with stale bread, migrants embarked onto cargo or cattle boats, for several cramped nights on straw pallets, wood boards or rolling decks, sometimes in befouled and unsafe conditions. One gale in 1845 claimed 26 ships off Holland, whilst the crew of a Hull-bound cargo steamer, having survived overnight lashed to the rigging, realized the deaths of all 16 passengers. They were Polish Jews "chiefly in needy circumstances," mostly travelling jewelers and families. Amongst the bodies was a mother and five children, and a man reportedly stood upright, holding an open prayer book in his extended hand. Death and disease amongst the migrants was common.