1890s pogroms

The persecutions and pogroms against the Jews in Russia and the Russian Pale significantly increased the number of the Sheffield community. The old families of Sheffield were assimilating and marrying out; the press and the public discourse were rife with anti-alien agitation and the established community were afraid that the influx of refugees might damage their relations with their Gentile neighbours. 

In the 1900s the Jewish Dispersal Committee was set up in London because of the large number of migrants, and it was considered that Sheffield could absorb more people. The pre-1890 settlers were on their way to becoming successful businessmen but the newcomers were woodworkers, tailors, and especially glaziers. For a shilling one could buy a whole rack of glass, load it in its heavy container onto one’s back and go round mending windows for a penny a time. If you knew some little street urchins who were careless with stones, so much the better.

The natural habitat for the newcomers was in the streets behind the Chevra in West Bar. They huddled poverty stricken in this mean district from which the prosperous ballabatim had begun to move along the Moor to the South and West. In 1900 the Jewish population of Sheffield was 500 but its youth and vigour can be gauged from the 17 marriages solemnised in that year. In the early years of the century there were still young ‘bocherim’ debarking at London and Hull and arriving in Sheffield penniless and homeless. The Board of Guardians helped them with money and a Jewish Shelter in Allen Street gave them accommodation until they found their feet. The streets of Sheffield were by no means paved with gold but the hearts of their landsleute were.

(Source: David Brown, ‘Notes on the Near-Gone Years’, p. 14, in Sheffield Jewish Journal, No. 50, Tercentenary Edition, 1956)