Falmouth in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries,
had been a very flourishing community, playing a full part in the affairs of the town. Amongst the leading Jews was Jacob Jacob;
his son, Moses Jacob, who presided over the Congregation from 1853 until 1860, used to pay an annual visit to London, where he never
failed to call on the Chief Rabbi - at whose election in 1844 Falmouth had been represented on the Committee of
Delegates1.
- when Dr. Adler would welcome him as representing one of the few Congregations which never had disputes to bring before him.
Towards the middle of the nineteenth century, Falmouth's
importance began to dwindle. As early as 1836 the port had sent a
delegation, headed by its Mayor, to London in consequence of a rumour that the
Post Office was to withdraw its packet service, and in 1850 this withdrawal took
place; in 1857 a telegraph service was installed so that it was no longer
necessary for shipping to wait in the harbour for instructions (whose receipt
might take a week or more) from London. Falmouth was rapidly becoming less
isolated. Until 1863, the quickest route to London and other parts of the
country had been by boat to Plymouth, whence the railway ran; in that year,
however, a railway was built from Truro and the improved communications resulted
in a fairly rapid exodus of the local Jews who moved to Bristol, Birmingham,
Plymouth and London. Departures such as these brought a swift decline to
the always small community at Falmouth. When The Jewish Chronicle,
in the first year of its existence, surveyed provincial Jewry, the Falmouth
Community was still, in 1842, a flourishing one of some fourteen families -
which, bearing in mind the size of the Victorian household, must have
represented at least seventy or eighty individuals; within thirty-five years,
this number had shrunk to three families,2. services were no longer
regularly held, the Community had ceased to enjoy the presence of a minister,
and from 1854 onwards it was necessary to have recourse to Penzance - itself by
now a dwindling Community - for supplies of Kosher
meat.3.
Apart from a burial in 1913,4.
the end came in 1880
with the departure for London of Samuel Jacob, whose family had been the
mainstay of the Congregation during four generations.
