Chapter Three: Part Two

Births, Marriages and Deaths

At no period has it been possible to make any accurate statistical survey of births, marriages, and deaths, in the Jewish community, whether of the South-West or elsewhere in England, because of a lack of detailed and precise information. Before 1837, communal records relating to these matters, when kept, were done so haphazardly, and after that date, when the state compelled the registration of such data, synagogues kept only a copy of marriages performed under their auspices but not of all births and deaths. However, such surviving evidence as there is, does permit some observations to be made.

In the South-West, records which relate to the births of Jewish boys in Plymouth have survived in the form of Joseph Joseph's Circumcision Register (1784-1834) [Joseph Joseph was born in 1766 and died in 1846. His register is on the blank pages at the front and rear of Sefer Sod Hashem, Brith Hashem (Amsterdam, 1745). On the front cover is a small silver plate inscribed in Hebrew 'Josepha ben Abraham Plymouth', and bound into the book is the service, written on parchment, for circumcision in the Synagogue.] and entries in the Plymouth Hebrew Congregation's Book of Records (1829-67). [Pp. 10a-13a, 14a-22b. The Exeter Hebrew Congregation's accounts indicate that there were 10 boys born from 1829 until 1835, but the record is not necessarily complete.] Evidence on Jewish male births in Penzance is to be found in the Circumcision Register of B.A. Simmons, in which he recorded the circumcisions he performed there from 1821 to 1847. [A copy is in the possession of Mr Godfrey Simmons. Most mohelim kept and keep, with varying reliability, registers of their circumcisions.]

In Plymouth, Joseph Joseph performed 74 circumcisions between 1784 (when he was about eighteen years old) and 1816, and then 2 more in 1834. Fifteen of the babies were his own sons, grandson, and nephews, 4 were the grandchildren of Abraham Ralph of Barnstaple, a relative, 7 were Samuel Hart's children, another relative, and 10 others he himself designated as relatives: that is, just less than half were his own sons and sons of his relatives. In addition to these Joseph performed two circumcisions in Exeter in 1786 and 1816, either because the parents were close friends or perhaps Exeter was temporarily without a mohel. He also performed a circumcision in Tavistock and one in Totnes, but these were for members of the Plymouth Congregation. These figures may be tabulated, as in Table 16.

Table 16: The number of circumcisions performed by

Joseph Joseph of Plymouth, 1784-1834

PeriodNumber of circumcisions performed

1784-178917

1790-179916

1800-180924

1810-181617

1834 2

--

Total 76

==

The question arises, did Joseph circumcise all the Jewish boys born in Plymouth in the period 1784-1816 or was there another practitioner also at work? If he was the sole practitioner in Plymouth at this period then the average number of Jewish births per annum in that town can be estimated as twice 2.3. i.e. 4.6. [74 male births in 32 years gives an average of 2.3 per year.] In Portsmouth, over a similar period from 1762 until 1807, Reb Leib Aleph performed 113 circumcisions, an average of about 2.5 per year. [TJHSE, XVII (1951), 251. For seven and a half years a section (the larger) of the Portsmouth community brought their own mohel from London when his services were needed. Reb Leib's list also includes a number of circumcisions which he performed at Brighton and elsewhere.] In Liverpool, Samuel Yates performed 76 circumcisions in the first quarter of the nineteenth century over a period of 24 years, a little over 3.1 per year. [Lucien Wolf, The Families of Yates and Samuels (privately printed 1901), p. 13.] It appears that other mohelim lived in Plymouth and may have been active in the period 1784-1816, the beadle Reb Hayyim Issacher being one of them [When he left in 1823, the next incumbent was appointed shochet, reader of the scriptures, mohel, and 'cantor in time of need' (PHC Min. Bk. II, p. 178).] and Lipe Levy (died 1836) another. [The chronogram on his tombstone was the Hebrew of 'who circumcised children to enter them into the covenant' (Berlin, PHC tomb. 13/2).]

Reference has already been made to a register of the births kept in the Plymouth Congregation's Book of Records. The first birth noted was in June 1829 and the last in October 1837. Altogether 43 births were recorded, 25 boys and 18 girls.

The 43 children born over eight years represent a birth rate in the Jewish community of Plymouth of just under 5.4 per year. However, by no means all the Jewish births which took place in Plymouth in that period were recorded, as is evident from the 1851 Census returns. Twelve girls and four boys of Jewish parentage were noted in the Census who were born in Plymouth between 1829 and 1837 whose births were not recorded in the Plymouth Congregation's register. When these 16 are added to the 43 in the register, a birth rate of 7.3 per year is obtained. This is almost double the birth rate derived from Joseph's Circumcision Register and, unless there was a marked increase in the birth rate in the later period, further indicates that Joseph was not the sole mohel in practice in Plymouth between 1784 and 1816.

A slight record of Jewish births in Cornwall is contained in the circumcision register of B. A. Simmons who was the mohel for Cornwall. He records sixteen circumcisions which he performed between 1821 and 1847. There were two in Falmouth, in 1821 and 1823; five in Truro, in 1821, 1823 (two), 1825 and 1826; and the rest in Penzance, which include four of his sons and a grandson. The very paucity of circumcisions in Cornwall is an indication that the communities there were hardly self-generating, though again a caveat must be entered &emdash; there may have been other mohelim at work.

In his circumcision register, Joseph Joseph of Plymouth happily recorded the date of both birth and circumcision. This throws light not only on the health of the children but also on the number of caesarean births in the period covered by the register, 1784-1816. This is because Jewish law demands that the child should be circumcised on the eighth day after birth unless the child be ill, in which case it is forbidden to proceed until he be better. The usual illnesses which cause a postponement are jaundice or a yellow body, discharge from the eyes, difficulty in feeding, or underweight. [See Yoreh Deah, 260. Mohelim will not circumcise a child unless he weighs 6 lbs. (See Metzudat David to S. Ganzfried's Kizzur Shulchan Aruch, 163).] Modern mohelim anticipate postponement in about 10 per cent of cases, it is therefore noteworthy that all of the 74 circumcisions performed by Joseph Joseph was 'in its time'. [It is instructive to compare this with Elijah Pearlson 220 circumcisions performed between 1875 and 1906 in Newcastle upon Tyne and Hull of which all but two were on time (MS register in possession of Elias Pearlson, Sunderland).] Jewish law permits circumcisions to be performed on the eighth day when that is the Sabbath or a Festival only where the birth is a natural one, but if the child is born by a caesarean delivery then the circumcision must be postponed at least to the Sunday, and even then it only takes place if the child is otherwise well. Joseph performed 14 circumcisions on a Saturday [Circum. Reg. 7, 16, 21, 24, 31, 33, 41, 47, 52, 56, 58, 60, 66, 74.] and one on a Festival, [Ibid. 3.] indicating that there were no caesarean births amongst these 15. [In the early 1970's, about 15 per cent of Jewish births in the North-East of England were by caesarian (information from the Sunderland mohel, the late Revd J. Braunold).]

It would be useful to compare the annual birth rate per thousand in the Jewish community of Plymouth at various times with that of all England. Unfortunately, it is rarely, if ever, possible to assess accurately the number of Jews present in Plymouth at one time. It is even more difficult to do so over a period long enough to have a sufficiently large number of births &emdash; and there are no accurate statistics of those available &emdash; to make any meaningful comparisons possible.

Turning from births to marriages much more can be said. Firstly, the decennial census returns throw light on the marital status of Jews in the South-West of England at that time. Secondly, certain marriage statistics may be extracted from the almost complete set of marriage registers recording all marriages which took place under the aegis of the four Jewish communities in Devon and Cornwall from 1837 until 1912. [1912 is a convenient date at which to stop, just before the First World War and before a number of marriages took place involving parties or their children still (1990) alive.]

Utilizing the 1851, 1861, 1871 and 1881 census returns it is possible to obtain a detailed picture of the marital structure within the Plymouth and Exeter Congregations in the mid-nineteenth century. Table 17 summarizes the figures.

Table 17: The marital status of Jews in Plymouth

and Exeter in the mid-nineteenth century

In town on the night of P l y m o u t hE x e t e r

the census 1851 1861 1871 1881 1851 1861

Husbands and wives 62 56 90 86 26 18

Married women (husbands

apparently away temporarily) 8 1 3 66 2

Married men (wives

apparently away temporarily) 3 2 5 23 1

__ __ þ_ __ __ __

Total number of married

Jews noted in census 73 59 98 94 35 21

Add number of husbands and

wives apparently away

temporarily 11 3 8 89 3

__ __ ___ ___ __ __

84 62 106 102 44 24

Widowers 3 4 6 22 2

Widows 10 9 6 53 1

Non-Jewish spouse 1 - - -1 -

Marital status not mentioned 1 1 - -- -

Total number of Jews noted

in the census 278 233 268 280 128 73

(Source: Decennial census records, 1851 - 1881.)

We may now examine the marriage registers of the South-West Congregations. Since 1837, each Anglo-Jewish Congregation has kept two identical marriage registers. When they are filled up, one is retained by the Congregation and the other returned to the Registrar-General. The Plymouth Congregation has preserved a complete set of marriage registers from 1837 until the present day. These registers record 149 entries in the first volume which spans the period 16 August 1837 to 16 October 1912. [See supra, p. 115, ~n. .] The data which can be extracted from these entries will be discussed in detail after briefly describing the entries in the marriage registers of the other three South-West Congregations.

The Exeter Congregation's registers have now disappeared, but the Registrar-General has his own copy of the registers and they were made available for inspection, with the proviso that the particulars of no individual entry be disclosed and no reference by name to any actual person be made or individuals in the matter be approached. [Letter to the author from the General Register Office, 2 December 1964.] There were 30 weddings celebrated under the auspices of the Exeter Congregation between 1838 and 1872, and one more each in the years 1902 and 1907. The first 20 and last 2 entries in the surviving Exeter register give only the names of the bride and groom and the place of marriage, i.e. there are only ten entries in which full information is given about ages, occupations, marital status, and father's occupation. [Nineteen of the weddings are mentioned in the local press giving mostly the same information as in the registers, and sometimes supplementing it.]

The Penzance Congregation's copy of its marriage register was deposited with the Board of Deputies, London. According to it there were 17 marriages between 1838 and 1892. The Falmouth Congregation's marriage register has survived only at the General Register Office, and contains only 3 entries. Because there are so few entries in the other three Congregations, any meaningful use of the Jewish marriage registers of the South-West for statistical purposes is here necessarily restricted to those of the Plymouth Hebrew Congregation. It should be noted that Jews may lawfully contract marriage in England according to Jewish usages only if both parties are Jewish. [6 and 7 Wm. IV, cap. 85, sec. 2. Eva Lavinia Kinsey Atkins and Emma Boramlagh Hawke who, judging by their names were not Jewesses, and who were nevertheless married under the auspices of the Plymouth and Penzance Congregations, must therefore have been converts to Judaism (PHC Marriage Register, 99; PenHC Marriage Register, 17).]

According to Joseph Jacobs, European Jews in the nineteenth century married less than non-Jews of the same country in proportion to their numbers. In Prussia, for example, between 1820 and 1876 there were 75 Jewish marriages per thousand of population compared with 88 amongst Christians. For Russia, the corresponding figures are: for the period 1852-9, 82 Jewish marriages per thousand compared with 95 Christian, and in 1867 there were 87 Jewish marriages as against 100 Christian marriages per thousand. [Joseph Jacobs, Jewish Statistics (1891) (afterwards quoted as Jacobs, Jewish Statistics), p. 49.] For comparison, the frequency of Jewish marriages in Plymouth for the period 1837 until 1906 may be determined by an analysis of the marriage registers. In this seventy-year period, 135 marriages were celebrated under the aegis of the Plymouth Congregation, [PHC Marriage Register.] which, with an average Jewish population of 266 in any one year, gives an annual rate of 8.0 marriages per thousand. [See Table 18, infra, p. 121. There were between 1.5 and 2.6 Jewish marriages in Plymouth per year during this period.]

This figure being barely one-tenth of the marriage rate given by Jacobs is so low that it calls for comment. There is evidence from at least two other Anglo-Jewish communities which suggests that the marriage rate in the Plymouth Congregation was by no means exceptionally low for England. G. H. Whitehill quotes an annual marriage rate of 8.5 per thousand Sephardi Jews in London for the years 1851 to 1860. [Whitehill, Bevis Marks Records, III, p. 5.] The other Jewish community which was not greatly dissimilar to the Plymouth Congregation in the South-West of England was the Sunderland Congregation in the North-East of England. In the decade 1847-56, 15 marriages were celebrated in the Sunderland Congregation [Sunderland Hebrew Congregation Marriage Registers.] at a time when there were about 150 Jews resident in the town. [V. D. Lipman, Social History of the Jews of England, 1850-1950 (1954) (afterwards quoted as Lipman, Social History), p. 187.] This would give a marriage rate of 10 per annum per thousand. At the turn of the century from 1897 to 1906 there were 62 marriages under the auspices of the Sunderland Hebrew Congregation when the Jewish population was about 1100. [Jew. Year Bk. 1903.] This gives a marriage rate of about 5.6 per thousand.

Tables 18 and 19 set out in detail the figures on which the annual rate per thousand of marriages celebrated under the auspices of the Plymouth Congregation from 1837-1906 has been calculated, together with the comparative rates for Sunderland Jewry and the London Sephardim.

Table 18: Frequency of Jewish marriages in Plymouth, 1837 - 1906

Number of Estimated JewishRate

marriages population at per 1000

ä Period celebrated any one time per annum

1837-1846 18200 9.0

1847-1856 18250 7.2

1857-1866 15240 6.2

1867-1876 23230 10.0

1877-1886 18230 7.8

1887-1896 17250 6.8

1897-1906 26275 9.4

--- ----

135 Average 8.0

=== ====

(Source: Plymouth Hebrew Congregation Marriage Register.)

Table 19: Comparison of the annual marriage rate per 1000

of Jews in Plymouth, Sunderland, London (Sephardim),

1837 - 1906

London

PeriodPlymouth Sunderland (Sephardim)

1837-1846 9.0 8.0 -

1847-1856 7.2 10.0 -

1851-1860- - 8.5

1897-1906 7.4 5.6 -

(Sources: For Jewish marriages in Plymouth, PHC Marriage Registers; for Jewish population of Plymouth see supra, passim; for Sunderland and London rates see supra, p. 121.)

It would appear that either Jacobs or his printers mistakenly multiplied the marriage rate by ten. This conclusion is confirmed by the marriage rate for the Jewish population of Britain in the period 1901-20 of 9.0 per thousand (dropping to 4.3 per thousand in the period 1971-75) and for the general population of England which varied from 7.5 to 8.6 per thousand between 1901 and 1975. [S. J. Prais, 'Polarization or Decline?', Jewish Life in Britain, 1962 - 1977, eds. S. Lipman and V. D. Lipman (1981), p. 5.]

Age at marriage affects the physical, mental and social traits of a people. Jacobs and other nineteenth-century statisticians defined 'normal' marriages as those effected by brides between the ages of 18 and 40 years and bridegrooms under the age of 40. 'Abnormal' marriages, then, are those where the bride is under 18 or over 40, or bridegrooms over 40. All the brides in the marriages celebrated under the auspices of the Plymouth Congregation in the period 1837-1906 were 'normal', even the two widows remarrying whilst still young. [PHC Marriage Register, 10, 73.] As to 'abnormal' bridegrooms, only one, aged 43, occurs in the 111 entries where the age is given. Again, even the widowers remarried whilst still comparatively young, between 37 and 44. [PHC Marriage Register, 32, 72, 125. Three widowers listed as 'over 21' were Abraham Emdon (no. 5) who was 41, Mark Levy (no. 10) who was 44, and Raphael Harris (no. 55) aged 35.] This situation may be contrasted with central Europe where in 1873, 12 per cent of Jewish marriages were 'abnormal' against 35 per cent for Catholics and 33 per cent for Protestants. [Jacobs, Jewish Statistics, p. 51.]

The average age of Jewish grooms on marriage in Plymouth from 1850 until 1906 was comparatively young, grooms being 25.7 years of age and brides 22.4. This period may be conveniently broken down into two, the first from 1850-1878 when the marriages were predominantly from the English-born community descended from the Central European immigrants, and the second from 1882 until 1906 when the marriages were mainly from the new Russo-Polish immigration. In the first period the average age of grooms was 27.2 years, and of the brides 22.9. In the second period grooms married nearly three years earlier and brides one year earlier as Table 20 shows.

Table 20: Age at marriage of Jews in Plymouth, 1850 - 1906

Average

Number age ofN u m b e r of G r o o m s

of groomsAged 19 Aged Aged 31

Period marriages in years or below 20-30 and over

1850-1906 111 25.7 1 9614

1850-187854 27.2 - 4212

1882-190657 24.3 1 54 2

Average N u m b e r of B r i d e s

Number age of Aged 19 Aged Aged 31

ofbrideor below 20-30 and over

Period marriagesin years

1850-1906 111 22.4 14 96 1

1850-187854 22.9 6 47 1

1882-190657 21.9 8 49 -

(Source: PHC Marriage Registers.)

These figures compare closely with those obtained from the marriage registers of the Sunderland Hebrew Congregation in the second half of the nineteenth century. [Figures extracted from the Sunderland Hebrew Congregation Marriage Registers. Figures for the Jewish population of Great Britain as a whole are not available.] In Sunderland from 1852 until 1893 there were 130 marriages where the ages were noted, the average age of grooms being 25.3 years and of brides 22.0 years. The Sunderland Jewish community's registers show a tendency for the average age to increase slightly where the corresponding period in Plymouth shows a decrease, perhaps because the Russo-Polish immigration arrived in the North-East earlier than in the South-West. The comparison of the average age on marriage of Jewish grooms and brides in Plymouth and Sunderland may be expressed in tabular form, as in Table 21.

Table 21: Comparison of age at marriage of Jews in

Plymouth and Sunderland, 1850 - 1906

Average age in years of

Town PeriodGroomsBrides

Plymouth1850-1878 27.2 22.9

Sunderland 1852-1874 25.0 21.8

Plymouth1882-1906 24.3 21.9

Sunderland 1874-1893 25.4 22.2

Plymouth1850-1906 25.7 22.4

Sunderland 1852-1893 25.3 22.0

(Source: Plymouth and Sunderland Hebrew Congregations'

Marriage Registers.)

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By far the largest number of brides and grooms in the marriages solemnized under the aegis of the Plymouth Congregation, and likewise under the Sunderland Hebrew Congregation, in the second half of the nineteenth century fall into the 20-30 year-old age group. Very few Jewish grooms in Plymouth were under 20 years old. Indeed, from 1850 (when exact ages were first entered in the marriage registers) until 1878 there were no grooms below 20 years old, and from 1882 until 1906 only 1.7 per cent of the grooms were under 20 years old. In a society where the groom was expected to provide a home and keep his wife it is not surprising to find very few young men marrying under the age of 20. Conditions in the latter part of the nineteenth century in Russia were very different. Nearly half the grooms there were under 20 years old, [Cf. Table 22, infra.] but that was because it was thought that married Jewish men might be exempted from army conscription &emdash; virtually a twenty-five year hard labour sentence from which few returned sound in mind and body. [For a dramatic description of the horrors endured by Jewish conscripts in the Russian army in the nineteenth century, see S. M. Dubnow, History of the Jews in Russia and Poland (Philadelphia, 1946), II, 24ff.] Few Jewish women in Plymouth married when they were over 30 years of age. As Table 22 shows, only 1.8 per cent of Jewish brides in Plymouth in the 1850-1878 period were over 31 years old, and in the 1882-1906 period there were none at all in this age group.

Table 22 shows the percentage of Jewish brides and grooms in Plymouth in the three age categories, with comparative figures of Jews in Russia and Germany and another Jewish community in England.

Table 22: Percentage of marriages of Jews in England, Russia

and Germany according to age groups, 1850-1906

Under 20Between 20-30 Over 31

years old years oldyears old

% of % of % of % of % of % of

Place Period grooms brides grooms brides grooms brides

Moscow1868-1872 6.2 49.3 76.6 48.5 17.2 2.2

Russia1867 47.6 63.2 37.9 29.4 14.5 7.4

Posen 1867-1873 0.7 17.8 65.7 69.1 33.6 13.1

Plymouth 1850-1878 0.0 11.1 77.7 87.0 22.2 1.8

1882-1906 1.7 14.0 94.7 85.9 3.5 0.0

Sunderland 1852-1893 2.3 20.8 86.1 76.9 11.5 2.3

(Sources: The figures for Moscow, Russia and Posen are taken from Jacobs, Jewish Statistics, p.50; for Plymouth and Sunderland from the Marriage Registers of the respectiveCongregations.)

Before leaving the question of age it may be remarked that 70 per cent of Jewish husbands in Plymouth during the period 1850-1906 were older than their wives. In Budapest, at the same period, 73 per cent of Jewish husbands were older than their wives, compared to 64 per cent of the general population. [Jacobs, Jewish Statistics, p. 53.] The average difference of age between Jewish husbands and wives in Plymouth in the nineteenth century was 3.9 years, in Budapest it was 8.7 for Jews, compared with 6.7 for others. [Idem. In Sunderland, in 135 marriages there were 6 widows and 3 widowers. Two of the widows, aged 24 and 30, married younger men aged 19 and 21 respectively (Sunderland Hebrew Congregation Marriage Registers).]

In the 135 Jewish marriages which took place in Plymouth between 1837 and 1906 six widowers remarried but only two widows. This was in line with the national trend in England where in 1861, for example, twice as many widowers married spinsters as bachelors married widows. [24th Annual Report of the Registrar-General (1861), p. iv.] The two widows represent 1.5 per cent of the brides. This figure may be contrasted with that of widows remarrying in the general population of England in the period 1851-1861, which was 9 per cent of all the brides. [Ibid. p. v.] The six widowers represent just under 5.2 per cent of the Jewish grooms and this figure may be contrasted with that of widowers in the general population of England in the period 1851-1861, which was 14 per cent of the grooms. [Idem.] This markedly lower remarriage rate of Jewish widows and widowers in Plymouth may be due to the smallness of the numbers or other unknown factors.

From 1837 until 1906 it was seemingly the custom in the South-West Congregations for brides to be married in their home town. Of the 135 Jewish marriages performed in Plymouth between 1837 and 1906, the bride was a Plymothian in every instance except two, [PHC Marriage Register, 61, 62.] and the father of one of these two was Abraham Emdon, a member of a long established Plymouth family, and the other was from Birmingham, probably a Sephardi, and there was no Sephardi synagogue in Birmingham, [A brother of this bride, Edward Marcoso, married in the Plymouth synagogue, six weeks after his sister (PHC Marriage Register, 63).] whereas at least 35 of the 135 grooms came from various other towns. [PHC Marriage Register, passim.]

There is one aspect of the address given by Jewish brides and grooms in Plymouth during the period under discussion which calls for special comment. It is that a surprisingly high number of the grooms who were listed as living in Plymouth, 31 out of 100, had the same address as their brides. It is highly unlikely that all these couples were cohabiting before marriage. The possible explanations include:

1) Some of the grooms may have come from overseas shortly before the wedding, and therefore had no 'usual place of residence' in England. In such cases it would be natural for the groom to give his bride's address.

2) The party giving notice of the marriage to the Superintendent Registrar may have entered the same address for bride and groom merely as a matter of convenience, either to save the trouble of giving notice in two separate districts, or to save fees which were lower when both parties lived in the same registration district. In either event, such a proceeding was illegal and could, in theory, have led to a prosecution.

3) There may well have been cases where bride and groom lived in the same street but in different houses, or even in the same house but in different parts. [For a full discussion of the possible explanations and for an account of a similar phenomenon in London Sephardi circles, 1837-1901, see Whitehill, Bevis Marks Records, III, pp. 2, 3.]

There appears to have been only one certain case of marriage between an Ashkenasi and a Sephardi in the South-West of England, and in view of the small numbers of the latter this is hardly surprising. Moreover, the Sephardi community in London positively discouraged such mixed marriages, at least until the middle of the nineteenth century. [Hyamson, Sephardim of England, p. 300. See also Whitehill, Bevis Marks Records, III, p. 5. The mahamad, the governing body of the London Sephardim, probably had no jurisdiction over him as he came from North Africa. Moreover, some London Sephardim, Spanish in origin, looked down on their North African counterparts, calling them forres terros (= wild beasts).] One such mixed marriage took place in Plymouth in 1823, [PHC A/c. 1821, pericope Miketz, 1822.] when a Jacob ben Shalom of Mogador, a North African Sephardi, married Deborah, daughter of Benjamin Levy. The only other marriages known of which evidence has come to light where possibly one party was Sephardi were those of the brother and sister Marcoso of Birmingham, who married Hannah Samuels and Solomon Wolf II of Plymouth in that town in 1872. [PHC Marriage Register, 62, 63.]

In order to estimate the number of Jews in a community at any particular time it is often necessary to estimate how many individuals were living at home in the average Jewish family, because the size of a community is often given in terms of family units. It is possible to assess accurately the size of the Jewish family in the South-West in 1851 by noting the size of Jewish families enumerated by the census of that year in Exeter, Falmouth, Penzance and Plymouth. For the purpose of estimating the size of family only near relatives such as grandfather, father, son, husband, brother, nephew and their female counterparts, as well as in-laws have been counted. Those described as 'visitor', 'lodger', or 'servant' have not been counted. The results are tabulated in Table 23.

ä

Table 23: The number of related individuals in Jewish

households in the South-West of England, 1851

Family size N u m b e r o f f a m i l i e s i n Number of

in persons Exeter Falmouth Penzance Plymouth individuals

1 6 2 1 12 21

2 4 1 1 10 32

3 6 - 3 9 54

4 1 - - 7 32

5 4 2 1 5 60

6 3 - - 6 54

7 1 2 - 9 84

8 1 - - 4 40

9 1 - - - 9

10 - - - 2 20

11 - - 1 - 11

12 1 - - - 12

13 1 - - - 13

-- - - -- ---

29 7 7 64 442

== = = == ===

Total number (29+7+7+64) = 107 family units representing 442 individuals

(Source: Census 1851.)

From Table 23 it appears that the average number of related individuals in the Jewish family in the South-West was a little over 4.1. This compares closely with the size of the average family in the whole of England in 1851 which was 4.00. [Census of Great Britain in 1851, (1854), p. 12.] V. D. Lipman, when attempting to establish the number of individuals in the mid-nineteenth century Jewish community of London from a source which gave only the number of families assumed a multiplier of five. [Lipman, Social History, p. 10.] By the South-West experience it would appear that Lipman's estimate was a little on the high side.

Marital fidelity and sexual morals of the Jews in England and the countries from which they originated have been accorded much adulation, [Gartner, Jewish Immigrant, p. 166, 'The Jewish home has perhaps received an exaggerated measure of adulation'.] though it is as difficult to prove the general proposition as it is easy to find exceptions which prove the rule. Apparently, sexual misconduct was sufficiently frequent in the Plymouth Congregation at the end of the eighteenth century to warrant a special rule:

One who lives with a non-Jewess ... may not come to any holy matter [i.e. he may not be called to the Reading of the Law]. [PHC Min. Bk. I, Regulation 17.]

Of course, such unions need not necessarily have been immoral as, in the absence of civil marriages, there was no easy way of regularizing them. Abraham Daniel of Bath or Abraham Franco of Plymouth, for example, could only have married their common law wives in church, and though such a church wedding was technically possible for an unbaptized Jew, they were probably reluctant to take advantage of the facility. For in the eyes of the Jewish community such a step would be tantamount to apostasy, whereas both Daniel and Franco retained close feelings of attachment to the Jewish faith: Daniel was mindful of the Plymouth synagogue in his will, and Franco wanted his wife to be accepted by the Jewish community. [See infra, p. 342.]

The rule quoted above takes official cognizance of Jews living in sin with non-Jewish mistresses, but as there was no similar rule promulgating any punishment for a Jew living with a Jewess without being married to her, it may be assumed that such conduct was virtually unknown in Plymouth in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The virtue of some Jewish women in the South-West, however, was not above suspicion as at least one Jew in Exeter apparently suspected his wife's affections. In his will dated 1808, Moses Mordecai left the bulk of his fortune to his wife, Hindla, with the proviso,

I solemnly prohibit my wife to marry Mr. Bendix, [Probably Samuel Benedict (1740-1821) of Exeter.] nor shall she take him as a lodger and in case of her doing it nevertheless, then she shall have no more than her ketubah [marriage settlement] £20, or to arrest her £1,000. [P.C.C. Loveday 298, 1810.]

The minutes of the London Beth Din for 1812 record,

a letter which the head of the Beth Din wrote to Plymouth to that man who wishes to live with his prostitute wife. [MSS minutes of Beth Din, 1805-35, p. 15a (in C. Roth collection).]

It is not certain in this case whether the woman was a prostitute in the generally accepted sense of the term, or whether she was one according to Jewish law which defines a prostitute as a woman who has had intercourse with any man to whom she is forbidden. Thus an unmarried woman could have paid intercourse with any number of men, provided that they were not blood relatives, and yet not be classed in Jewish law as a prostitute, whereas a married woman having intercourse but once with someone other than her husband and without fee is termed a prostitute. The same minute dated 13 Tammuz 5572 [=23 June 1812] refers to a 'Moses ben Judah Mannheim [Judah ben Hayyim Mannheim who was acquitted of forgery charges (see supra, p. 160) may have been related.] who has two children from his wife's daughter [i.e. his step-daughter], one, Isaac, born during his wife's lifetime, and the other, ten months after her death, the two children are regarded as biblical bastards, [A more stringent category than bastards resulting from unions prohibited by rabbinic law.] the name of the second is Eleazer Lazer'. There were four men in Plymouth who were called Moses ben Judah. They were: Moses Lazarus, son of Lippe Lazarus, who had a son Isaac in 1832; [PHC Bk. of Records, p. 10.] Wolf of Poland who died in the 1832 cholera epidemic; [PHC Bk. of Records, p. 55b.] Moses who unsuccessfully tendered for the baking of matzah in 1834; [PHC Min. Bk. II, p. 227.] and Pike from Exeter who visited Plymouth in 1821. [PHC A/c. 1821, p. 17.] None of them fit well with the man referred to in the Beth Din minute, and he may not even have been a Plymothian, in spite of the proximity of the two cases in the one minute.

In the nineteenth century, where matters could be put right the Chief Rabbi in London and the Plymouth Congregation did all they could to facilitate proper marriage. For example, Dr Adler wrote to the president of the Plymouth Congregation on 8 September 1851 that Salmon Eliezer [In the Plymouth Congregation's Marriage Register he is Sam Alexander.] of Plymouth 'eight months ago formed a clandestine union with a Jewish girl in Hull, and now wants to get married'. Adler asked the president to institute enquiries about Eliezer's status. This was followed by another letter saying that everything was satisfactory and the wedding could take place, the fees being waived. [Chief Rabbinate Archives, vol. 2, under date 8 September 5611. The marriage took place in November (PHC Marriage Register, I, 25, 19 November 1851). His bride was Rachel Bowman, illiterate (see also infra, p. 364).] Adler again wrote to the president in 1861, this time asking him to investigate the morals of a Mr Marks, and later saying that there was a strong presumption that Marks was guilty and therefore could not read the prayers until the case was heard. [Ibid. vol. 8, no date, no number; vol. 9, letter no. 521.] Towards the end of 1867 or 1868, [Ibid. vol. 9, letter No. 2007, 18 October but no year recorded.] Adler wrote to Revd Mendelssohn in Exeter that he had met 'the Zamoisky girl' who had left her mother to be with her father, [Presumably this was the Monsieur Zamoisky who entertained the Exeter public with a series of four demonstrations of Mesmerism at the Globe Hotel Assembly Rooms, Exeter (Western Daily Mercury, 23 February 1863).] without her mother's consent. Adler said that the girl could go back to Exeter and people need not think she had been immoral,

so please avoid calumny as Mrs. Adler is convinced the girl has not done anything wrong.

At the same time Adler wrote to Mrs Zamoisky to say that she should do a mother's duty and take the girl back, as

she has not yet fallen but there would be great danger if she stayed any longer. [Chief Rabbinate Archives, vol. 9, letter Ho. 2008.]

A few months later, Adler wrote to the president of the Plymouth Congregation saying that he would not send a marriage authorization until he was satisfied that (unnamed) parties had not been previously engaged, [It is not clear why he wanted this assurance.]

and if she is pregnant she must confirm on oath before you and the shochet that Mr. &emdash; is the natural father of the child. [Ibid. letter No. 2069.]

But if the morals and reputation of some were questionable it is also true to say that the Jewish community of Plymouth took pains to protect the reputation of respectable girls. Two instances of a similar nature confirm this. The first was when an accident befell Esther daughter of Judah on the sixth day of Passover, 1794:

She was standing on the table to watch the sight of the army to amuse herself like the other girls, as she was at that time between eight and nine years of age. She fell backwards from the table on to a chair which was standing there. Her mother looked at her at once and immediately to see whether she had any wound or bruise. Then she saw blood on her dress there. Then her mother sent to three women &emdash; elders, by name Beilah wife of Moses Yorkshire, also the woman Deichah wife of Moses, beadle of the holy congregation, may its Rock and Redeemer preserve it, and also Reichla, wife of Naftali, to rule whether it was blood of virginity or not. They thought that they were in doubt if it was blood of virginity or not. Therefore let this be for a memorial so that there should not be found in her, God forbid, an evil name, for there are men of Belial who say that she whored in the house of her mother and father. [PHC Min. Bk. II, p. 57.]

A similar accident befell another girl, Hannah, the ten year old daughter of Manasseh ben Zvi, [= Emanuel Hart.] who fell from a chair and left blood. She was examined by a doctor who was in doubt whether it was blood of virginity or not. Hayyim Issacher, beadle of the Plymouth Congregation in 1821, recorded the incident in his account book 'so that the kosher daughters of Israel shall not be put to shame'. [PHC A/c. 1821, p. 107. There could also have been a practical reason for the examination, accidental loss of virginity halved the value of her ketubah (=marriage settlement) (Mishnah Ketubot, 1:3). This, perhaps, was the reason for a complaint laid before the court of Chief Rabbi Hirschell in 1821 by a husband who claimed his wife was not a virgin on their marriage. She admitted the fact but denied it was due to misconduct but that when she was a child she slipped on some stones and ruptured her hymen (Minutes of Beth Din, 1805-35, p. 38a, in C. Roth collection).]

One indication of the prevalence of pre-marital sex is the number of children born out of wedlock. In all the records of Jewish births in the South-West of England from 1784-1867, the name of the father is given. It may be assumed, therefore, that the father was invariably the husband of the mother, and that there were no recorded illegitimate births in this period. This state of affairs may be contrasted with that obtaining in the Jewish community in Newcastle in the six year period 1881-1887 when Elias Pearlson recorded 4 male births from unmarried mothers in 94 circumcisions. [MS Register in possession of Elias Pearlson, Sunderland. The Jewish Association for the Protection of Girls and Women maintained correspondents in provincial communities. In Plymouth in 1925 they were Ald. M. Fredman and L. Robins and there were 21 subscribers to its funds. L. Robins continued to act on his own until the second World War.]

It is possible that to some extent sexual morals amongst the Jews of the South-West, and perhaps in the rest of England as well, were influenced by, or perhaps just reflected, a discreditable trade which was carried on by some Jews. Southey in his Letters from England, (1809) writes, 'but when the Jews meet with a likely chapman they provide prints of a most obscene and mischievous kind ...' [Quoted by Rumney, 'Social Development', p. 135.] Their participation in this trade is confirmed from another source. At the end of 1814, there were some 2,350 American prisoners of war in Dartmoor Prison with whom 'the Jew traders did a roaring trade in watches, seals, trinkets, and bad books'. [Francis Abell, Prisoners of War in Britain (1914), p. 257. Gartner, Jewish Immigrant, p. 108, quotes The Polish Yidel of 1884, which declared that anti-Semitism in England was partly caused by the misdeeds of individual Jews in, inter alia, obscene publishing.]

Only one case of apparent criminal immorality certainly involving a Jew in the South-West has come to light. Joseph Jacob Sherrenbeck, probably the founder of the Plymouth Congregation, and certainly its leading light until his death about 1780, was fined twenty pounds and imprisoned for two years and had to find sureties for his good behaviour for seven years in 1734 at the Taunton Assizes when he was found guilty of criminal conversation with the wife of one Lazarus Chadwick. [Gent. Mag. IV (1734), p. 215.] Although the offence was described as one of 'criminal' conversation it was almost certainly a case of adultery and not of rape, which would have carried a far heavier penalty. [He was not tried at the Quarter Sessions, for which records survive. The Assize records are at the Public Record Office, London, but little has survived of this circuit and nothing which throws further light on the case.] In 1805, a Solomon Hymes was acquitted on a charge of rape at the Lent Assizes for Cornwall and Launceston. [Dorchester and Sherbourne Journal, 5 April 1805. It is possible that Hymes was not Jewish, but he might be Solomon Hymes (Lipman, 'Aliens List', 22, but aged 65?), or a namesake who figures in PHC A/c. 1821.]

There are no records available to indicate the prevalence of divorce in the nineteenth century either for the Anglo-Jewish community in general or the South-West Jewish community in particular.

Turning to statistics of deaths, unfortunately there is no evidence on which to make any realistic estimate of the life spans of Jews or Jewish mortality rates in the South-West of England at any period. Congregational records which have survived relate to comparatively short periods of time. Tombstones, which in the nineteenth century invariably recorded age at death, were not generally erected for the very young nor for the poor (whose lives were likely to have been shorter than the rich) and may therefore be supposed to give an exaggerated picture of longevity. Nor, apart from the cholera epidemic of 1832, which will shortly be discussed in detail, and a little information in the decennial censuses on the number of deaf and dumb, or blind, or lunatic Jews in Devon, is there any evidence about the type or prevalence of diseases in the Jewish communities of the South-West as distinct from the rest of the population of England.

Cholera struck Sunderland in 1831 and rapidly spread throughout England. The seven [There were actually eight buried in the Jewish cemetery as Mrs Franco, though married to a Jew (see infra, p. 342) was not a Jewess.] Jews in Plymouth who died from 'the plague' between 1st August and 2nd September, 1832, are listed in Table 24.

Table 24: Plymouth Jews who died in the cholera epidemic, 1832

NameDate of death

Moses ben Judah Woolf 1 August#

Shina Assenheim (a child)3 August##

Abraham Lazarus (a child)4 August

Hannah Woolfson 14 August*

Jacob Philip Cohen 17 August**

Mrs Fanny Lyons 28 August+

Abraham Franco 2 September

Mrs Abraham Franco2 September

# He was a recent immigrant from Poland and died in an inn, the Ring of Bells. He left £25 with Lazarus Solomon of Plymouth to be sent back to his family, which was done through the Chief Rabbi in London.

#£ Daughter of Isaac and Hannah Assenheim (PHC Bk. of Records, p. 55b).]

* She was the wife of Jacob Woolfson of London who settled in Plymouth about 1819 (PHC Min. Bk. II, 245; PHC A/c. 1821). He subsequently married Rose bas Alexander of Portsmouth and they had a son in October 1834 (PHC Bk. of Records, p. 12).

** He came to Plymouth from Lantshotz in Poland some time before 1819 and was a bachelor (PHC Min. Bk. II, p. 159). He seems to be identical with Meyer Jacob Cohen, dealer in hardware, whose will was proved at Totnes on 22 August 1832, effects under £100. (Devon Record Office, C794.

+ In 1822 she was a straw hat maker in Pike Street (Ply. Direct. 1822). She was married to Solomon Lyons who married again a year or two later.

(Source: PHC Bk. of Records, pp. 55, 56.)

The Hebrew entry in the Plymouth Congregation's Book of Records [PHC Bk. of Records, p. 56a. See Illustration 7.] relating to the death of the Franco's reads, in translation:

Abraham ben Nathan Portuguese went to his rest with his Gentile wife with whom he lived without marriage and from whom he has three sons and two daughters. They died and were buried both of them in one day and in one grave by decree of the plague. Monday 8 Ellul (5)592.

The English entry reads:

Mr and Mrs Abraham Franco they died together in one day and buried together in one grave, the 2nd day of September 1832, according to their counting. [This last phrase was added in Hebrew to avoid the theological implication of 1832 Anno Domini.]

In Penzance, there were two Jewish victims of the 1832 epidemic. One was Pessia, daughter of the Revd B. A. Simmons, who according to the tombstone inscription, died and was buried on Saturday, 7 November 1832, [PenHC tomb. 25. There is some mistake in the tombstone inscription, as 7 November 1832 was a Wednesday. Jewish law prohibits burials on the Sabbath. If this burial did take place on a Saturday, it may have been after the Sabbath, or perhaps an exception was made in the plague emergency.] and the other was Ruth, daughter of Joseph Joseph of Plymouth, who died on Saturday, 10 November 1832, aged 20. [PenHC tomb. 38, but according to Joseph Joseph's Circumcision Register, p. 13, it was 'Thursday night, that is Friday, 9 November'.]

In Exeter there was only one Jewish victim, Nathan Harris. Presumably he was a poor man because he does not appear in the Exeter Hebrew Congregation's records as a contributor and the Exeter Congregation had to bear the expense of a nurse (and brandy!) for him, and also to pay for his funeral. [EHC A/c. 1827, p. 125.]

The mortality rate amongst Jews resident in Plymouth &emdash; there being only one Jewish victim in Exeter, no statistically significant conclusion can be drawn about the Jewish mortality rate in that city &emdash; during the 1832 outbreak seems to have been higher than that of the general population of either Plymouth or Exeter. In Plymouth there were in all 779 deaths in a general population of about 76,000; [White's Devonshire Directory, pp. 634, 639.] in Exeter there were 440 deaths in some 28,000 [N. Longmate, King Cholera (1966) (afterwards quoted as Longmate, King Cholera), p. 132.] inhabitants. Expressing these figures as deaths per 1,000 the result is:

Deaths per 1,000 of Deaths per 1,000 of Jewish population general population Plymouth 28 10 Exeter 9 15.7

äThe high rate in Plymouth is truly surprising. The report of the General Board of Health on cholera presented to Parliament in 1853 [Quoted at length in the Hebrew Observer, 28 January 1853.] pointed out that Jews suffered much less in proportion to their numbers, their deaths being only 0.6 per 1,000 compared with 6.0 and 9.0 per 1,000 of the general population in Whitechapel and Shoreditch, which in any case had a large number of Jewish residents. The reasons for the Jews' comparative immunity were listed by the report:

1 Even the poorer Jews never crowd more than one family to a room.

2 Jews do not abuse alcohol.

3 Jews are particular about food.

4 Jews refresh their bodies better on their Sabbath rest.

5 Poor Jews do not enter workhouses, primary sources of infection, and being fewer are more easily relieved and hence no extreme destitution.

6 Jews annually cleanse their houses at Passover, the poorer ones limewhiting their rooms.

The factors which promoted the spread of cholera applied to Jew and non-Jew alike. The poor were debilitated by long hours of work, and low wages, no sanitation in their houses and but one necessary or convenience per street and even this not always utilized, excrement often being thrown into the street or river. Drinking water was scooped out of the river by bucket, fetched from the public pumps, or delivered through the conduit system, though the latter mode was sometimes available only for two or three hours a day. [Longmate, King Cholera, pp. 12, 14.] It has already been pointed out that about one in ten of Jewish families in Plymouth in the early nineteenth century took advantage of the conduit system. [Supra, p. 81.]

A possible explanation of the comparatively high incidence of cholera amongst the Jews in Plymouth in 1832 may lie in the fact that the men tended to travel in the course of earning their livelihood and frequently stayed at inns where the standards of cleanliness were low. At least one of the five or six adult victims was a recent immigrant and lived at an inn, [A Moses ben Judah Woolf who had not been in England long enough to acquire an established English name.] and two others, the Franco's, were impoverished.

The cholera epidemic of 1832 was closely observed in Exeter by Thomas Shapter and recorded by him. [Thos. Shapter, The History of the Cholera in Exeter in 1832 (1849) (afterwards quoted as Shapter, Cholera).] An Order of Council of 20 July 1832 directed local Boards of Health to purchase suitable land for burial grounds and then peremptorily ordered that all cholera victims should be interred in those special grounds. [Shapter, Cholera, p. 55.] Until 17 August 1832, the dead were buried in their usual cemeteries and up to that date 209 were buried in the usual cemeteries and 21 in the Jews' and dissenters' burial grounds. [Shapter, Cholera, p. 55.] Shapter does not further break down the figure so that the exact number of Jews might be ascertained, but as there are no tombstones of that date and no reference to burials in the Congregational accounts (other than Nathan Harris who died on 22 August) [EHC A/c. 1827, p. 125; Shapter, Cholera, p. 169.] it may be assumed that there were no Jewish deaths in Exeter whilst the usual cemeteries were in use.

The first Jewish death took place on 22 August, a day of prayer for the city, when 'the parochial churches, the Roman Catholic chapel, the dissenting places of worship and the Jews' Synagogue were alike open and crowded'. [Shapter, Cholera, p. 254.] The death of Nathan Harris raised a problem, because after 17 August all cholera victims had to be buried in the special cemeteries at Pester Lane or Bury Meadow, an exception could only be made if the regulation could be

safely dispensed with in any particular case ... which ... shall be entered in the minutes ... and transmitted ... to the Privy Council. [Shapter, Cholera, p. 55.]

To enforce this regulation would have interfered with the feelings and religious rites of the Jews who must have their own burying grounds. The Jews made representations to the Health Board asking for exemption and the mayor wrote to the Lords of the Council on 18 August 1832 to say that the basis of the Jews' application for exemption was,

ä

that it was their universal practice based on religious scruple never to open a grave in which a body has once been interred and that therefore no danger of infection could arise.

The Lords replied that they had no power to interfere, whereupon the Jews themselves suggested that another and separate burial ground should be provided. Shapter writes,

Whilst this proposition was being entertained one of the Jewish persuasion died from cholera. It was however thought better not to interfere in any way with their religious feelings ... the Board of Health, as the death had not been reported to them, assuming an official blindness. On 25 August a small portion of Bury Meadow was fenced off for them, but as no death from cholera subsequently occurred amongst these people, it was never used for this purpose. [Shapter, Cholera, p. 169.]

Before a separate part was fenced off, however, the Bishop of Exeter was asked his opinion and he wrote back,

I have nothing whatever to do with the Jews' burying ground, and no control over it ... I have no right, and certainly no wish to exercise my power or form any opinion. [Shapter, Cholera, p. 170. After the cholera epidemic of 1848 Parliament passed the Metropolitan Interment Act, 1850, which compelled the cemeteries of religious groups to conform to secular sanitary standards. The Act was replaced in 1852 by one which was more acceptable to the Jewish community (A. Gilam, 'The Burial Grounds Controversy between Anglo-Jewry and the Victorian Board of Health, 1850', Jewish Social Studies, XLV (1983), pp. 147-156).]

It appears from the foregoing account that the authorities in Exeter leaned over backwards to avoid giving offence to the local Jewish community. Their tolerance was probably motivated, in part, by a desire to avoid trouble of any kind, as there had already been civil riots in Exeter against the use of Bury Meadow and because coffins were carried underhand instead of upon the shoulders of the pall bearers. [Longmate, King Cholera, p. 131.] Disorders accompanied cholera throughout Europe, the poor imagining that it was spread by the rich prompted by Malthusian doctrines. [Longmate, King Cholera, p. 4.] The Jews do not appear to have been blamed for the spread of the disease, unlike after the Black Death when Jews who survived the plague were often massacred by fear-crazed mobs. [Graetz, History of the Jews, IV, 101-2; V, 728.]

The aftermath of the cholera brought its own problems with a large number of orphans. Longmate quotes one case which he says was typical of the generosity of working class families to one another in this time of crisis, which occurred at Bilston, Staffs. where three young children aged 12, 8 and 3 were seen wandering about the streets not knowing where to go, frightened and hungry, with a six-months-old baby at home. Four neighbors came in and took a child each. [Longmate, King Cholera, p. 114.] Similarly, in the Jewish community of Plymouth some kind soul or souls must have taken pity on the orphaned children of the Franco couple referred to above, as at least three of them were formally converted to Judaism just two months after the death of their parents. [London Beth Din Minutes, p. 63a (in C. Roth collection). If the children were to be brought up as Jews, a conversion was necessary, as in Jewish law a child takes the religion of its mother, and Mrs Franco was not a Jewess. One of the girls, Rebecca, who was fourteen years old when her parents died, later married Woolf Emden, her marriage on 16 August 1837 being the first recorded under the new Act in the Plymouth Congregation's Marriage Register. Her sister Bluma, eight years younger, was still living with Rebecca at the time of the 1851 Census.]

Finally, on the subject of disease, it may be added that according to the census returns there was in 1851 one deaf and dumb woman, a Harriet Bellam, [Census, 1851. She was born in Dartmouth, 1810, and died in Plymouth in 1890, (PHC tomb. F.5). She was supported by the Jewish Hand-in-Hand Society, Plymouth, for the last 20 or so years of her life (Hand-in-Hand A/cs, p. 36).] amongst the 278 Jews living in Plymouth, and in 1861 two deaf and dumb children out of the three belonging to Aaron and Sarah Aschfield. [Census, 1861.] In 1881, two tailors, Abraham Jacobs, 75, and Abraham Morris, 57, together with Morris' wife Harriet, 57, were all listed as blind. The 1881 Census also lists a young woman, 35, the mother of four children, as a lunatic. The numbers are too small to be statistically significant.