A recent message on one of the forums reminded that for, some time, I had been mulling over a piece about Stonemasons. Who and where were they? What were the particular skills of their craft? Was this a trade (or craft) that was handed down from father to son, or could any likely lad become apprenticed?
It is believed that the early stones were carved by local, non-Jewish, stone masons and that the bereaved family would visit the mason, look round his work and select something that most closely matched their needs. Certainly it’s fair to say that there are symbols that are used both on Jewish headstones as well as Christian ones, and similar themes, in particular those representing a young life lost with broken columns, cut flowers, cut branches etc.
I wonder how they managed with the Hebrew inscriptions and whether that would explain some of the anomalies that crop up from time to time? Did the deceased’s family write out the Hebrew for the stone mason to try and copy?
It seems more likely that it would have been the responsibility of a Synagogue functionary since, according to the Laws of the Congregation of the Hambro Synagogue published in 1844, the Rabbi of the Burial Society would check all inscriptions, before they were engraved, to ensure that the wording was correct and proper. In the event that he allowed a stone or tomb to be set that contained an error, he would apparently have been liable to pay for any alterations or corrections; a powerful incentive to get it right!
It would clearly be extremely difficult to trace these early masons but slightly simpler to find out about more recent practitioners
We have on site the details of James Samuel founder of J. Samuel and Son monumental masons who lived at Jews Burial Ground, Stepney according to the 1841 and 1851 census.
In 1873 J. Samuel and Son advertise as Monumental Masons and undertakers at 147 Sidney Street, Mile End. Established over fifty years (so before 1823) and providing headstones, tombs and monuments for all cemeteries, in stone, Aberdeen granite and marble, with the 'imperishable lead letters'. Although I doubt any one came back to complain I think its fair to say that the lead letters were not entirely imperishable.
Other's I have found are:
Barnett LEVY stonemason of Princes Street Coverleys Fields who had Sun insurance in Feb 1815.
In 1858 the partnership of John Lyons undertaker of 1 Alie Street, Goodman's Fields and Philip Levy, sexton and stonemason at Wellington Road Forest Lane was dissolved.
1861 the bankruptcy of Levi Lee 1 Carlton Road, Kentish Town.
1873 Barnett Levy monumental mason of 10 Sion Square advertises alongside J. Samuel and son in the Jewish Chronicle. A year later in 1874 there is E. Harris & Co at 1a Braumont Street, Mile end. E. Harris is advertising immediately below J. Samuel and son and includes in their advert "18 years at Messrs J. Samuel and Son"
In 1875 there is a change, E. Harris is now Harris and Barnett monumental masons. Their advert includes the "18 years with J. Samuel and Son".
1879 and John W Legge, sculptor of Aberdeen, advertises monuments and tomb furnishings, 'best quality from £5'.
By 1883 there are three London stone masons advertising. A. Van Praagh of Leman Street, Whitechapel along with J. Samuel and son, and Harris and Barnett monumental masons. All three saying that they provide designs on application.
1894 Directory has B. S. Polack of Bow E, Lincoln House, Lincoln Street, with his works at Gough Road, Stratford, adjoining the Jewish Cemetery: A. Van Praagh of 14 St Mark Street and works at Baron Sclater Street.: Harris and Son (rather than Harris and Barnett) at 1 Beaumont Street: and J Samuel and son at 147 Sydney Street.
Most of the above firms are clearly Jewish, but were the Masons employed to do the actual carving also Jewish?
This is very much a work in progress and it would be greatly appreciated if any of you out there who have further knowledge of London Stonemasons and their history would make contact.
Sources: London Gazette, Sun Fire Insurance, Jewish Chronicle, Directory of Jewish tradesmen 1894.
Sunday, 30 August 2009
Sunday, 9 August 2009
The fascinating story of Abraham Isaac, died 1733
Whilst searching on the National Archives website I came across the mention of a petition regarding an Abraham Isaac dated 1733. It didn't take me long to decide that I wanted to know more so I ordered a copy the next day.
The petition briefly tells us the story of what became of Abraham in mid May 1733, sadly there isn't a great deal of detail, leaving a lot to the imagination or, better still, further research!
Abraham was travelling to, or from, his home in Dukes Place in the City of London when on, or about the 16th May 1733, he died from a fall from a wagon on Barham Down.
Did this take place on what is today the A2 trunk road? Was this his wagon or possibly the mail coach? What caused him to fall? Was he attacked by a local highwayman such as the notorious 'Black Robin' known for shooting down coachmen? did the horse take fright, or the wagon hit a rock causing him to lose his balance? We will probably never know as there doesn't seem to have been an inquest.
However, we can learn a little about his family. He had at least one daughter. Her name was Eve and she was married to Jacob Isaac, a baker in St Mary Axe, London. Unfortunately no ages are mentioned, but just to add a little to the story, we could suppose that Eve was at least 20 years old given that she was married, she may of course have been older, and that perhaps Abraham was 20 when she was born, so it would place his birth in the late 1600's.
Abraham was probably travelling alone, at least not with friends or family or any one that knew him or his background. Presumably he wasn't carrying any papers either and therefore the village was unable to easily contact his family or, if they were able to, it took several months for the notice of Abraham’s death to reach them.
In view of the situation the decision was made to bury him and on the 16th of May 1733, Abraham Isaac was buried in the Church Yard of Barham. The local church would be St John's Church, noted for its magnificent beech trees, an ancient church going back to the 9th Century and mentioned in the Doomsday Book.
Sometime between May and Nov 1733 Abraham's family hears of his death and place of burial. His daughter Eve then petitions the Archdeacon of Canterbury, humbly praying for permission to remove the corpse of her father, Abraham Isaac, of the Jewish nation, from the Church Yard at Barham to be interred in the Jewish Burying Ground at Mile End, London. The decree is granted in court on the 8th Nov 1733.
There is nothing to say when exactly the body was moved or to which burial ground although the grounds in Alderney Road seem the most likely.
This contemporary record of a Jewish burial takes us to within 70 years of the Readmission of the Jews to the United Kingdom. It occurred only 35 years after the final purchase of the Alderney Road Burial Ground and over a decade before the acquisition of the Three Colt Yard extension. But Abraham and his pack, lying on the dusty Kentish road while, back in London his daughter anxiously waits for his return, is as vivid to me as if his story had just featured on the late evening TV News.
The petition briefly tells us the story of what became of Abraham in mid May 1733, sadly there isn't a great deal of detail, leaving a lot to the imagination or, better still, further research!
Abraham was travelling to, or from, his home in Dukes Place in the City of London when on, or about the 16th May 1733, he died from a fall from a wagon on Barham Down.
Did this take place on what is today the A2 trunk road? Was this his wagon or possibly the mail coach? What caused him to fall? Was he attacked by a local highwayman such as the notorious 'Black Robin' known for shooting down coachmen? did the horse take fright, or the wagon hit a rock causing him to lose his balance? We will probably never know as there doesn't seem to have been an inquest.
However, we can learn a little about his family. He had at least one daughter. Her name was Eve and she was married to Jacob Isaac, a baker in St Mary Axe, London. Unfortunately no ages are mentioned, but just to add a little to the story, we could suppose that Eve was at least 20 years old given that she was married, she may of course have been older, and that perhaps Abraham was 20 when she was born, so it would place his birth in the late 1600's.
Abraham was probably travelling alone, at least not with friends or family or any one that knew him or his background. Presumably he wasn't carrying any papers either and therefore the village was unable to easily contact his family or, if they were able to, it took several months for the notice of Abraham’s death to reach them.
In view of the situation the decision was made to bury him and on the 16th of May 1733, Abraham Isaac was buried in the Church Yard of Barham. The local church would be St John's Church, noted for its magnificent beech trees, an ancient church going back to the 9th Century and mentioned in the Doomsday Book.
Sometime between May and Nov 1733 Abraham's family hears of his death and place of burial. His daughter Eve then petitions the Archdeacon of Canterbury, humbly praying for permission to remove the corpse of her father, Abraham Isaac, of the Jewish nation, from the Church Yard at Barham to be interred in the Jewish Burying Ground at Mile End, London. The decree is granted in court on the 8th Nov 1733.
There is nothing to say when exactly the body was moved or to which burial ground although the grounds in Alderney Road seem the most likely.
This contemporary record of a Jewish burial takes us to within 70 years of the Readmission of the Jews to the United Kingdom. It occurred only 35 years after the final purchase of the Alderney Road Burial Ground and over a decade before the acquisition of the Three Colt Yard extension. But Abraham and his pack, lying on the dusty Kentish road while, back in London his daughter anxiously waits for his return, is as vivid to me as if his story had just featured on the late evening TV News.
Friday, 7 August 2009
GenPals Cemetery Project has moved address to www.genpals.com
When we started the cemetery project we had no idea how long it would last, how much we would be able to do and more importantly how successful it would be. So the data was placed as an additional file on a site I had been using for my own family history under the address genpals.co.uk/cemeteryproject.
Some two years later, the site has grown enormously and is still growing so we decided the cemetery project deserved its own address!
GenPals Cemetery Project is now at www.genpals.com if you have bookmarks for the old address they will no longer work.
There are a number of new entries for Balls Pond Cemetery and other cemeteries so please take a look.
Some two years later, the site has grown enormously and is still growing so we decided the cemetery project deserved its own address!
GenPals Cemetery Project is now at www.genpals.com if you have bookmarks for the old address they will no longer work.
There are a number of new entries for Balls Pond Cemetery and other cemeteries so please take a look.
Monday, 27 July 2009
Never leaving a stone unturned!
Half-a-day for the photography - then comes the real work.....
It's just over 4 months since we visited The Balls Pond Road Cemetery and we've been working flat out on processing the photos ever since. So why do we still have three times as many on our "to-do" list, as we have completed and uploaded onto the site? Well, some of that is down to the mundane demands of everyday living - like going to work, ferrying kids to school and old aunties to hospital, completing the tax returns and booking the car in for a service. In other words, the minutiae of life getting in the way of the serious business to which we, and this site are dedicated
Sometimes we may get caught up in a particular story that leads us down so many varied and interesting byways that, if we didn't call a self-imposed halt to our researches, they could be in danger of developing into a doctoral thesis.
With well over 2700 stones on site, we can now link people across centuries, cemeteries, countries and continents. We haven't yet transcribed Jacob Magnus died 1888 and buried in Balls Pond Road, but the links to him will take us to his distant cousins, Nathan Joseph Magnus, and Judith [Gitele} Joseph Magnus, both buried in Brady Street, and will connect to several other families on the way. The research could be extensive and the links will certainly be many and complex: it will be a fine calculation as to how much time we allow ourselves to spend on this one family
And, sometimes, we just get stuck. For several hours now I've been peering at a picture of a perfectly upright, undamaged stone with not a single visible character to denote who it memorialises. And, yes, I've tried every trick in the PhotoShop handbook - converting to negative, playing with the brightness and contrast. You name it, I've tried it. The stone refuses to give up its secrets.
With luck, we may be able to match it to one of the names recorded on the excellent Balls Pond Road Burial Ground site but we feel we would be short-changing researchers across the world, who may have a personal interest in this individual, if we didn't work overtime to uncover at least a trace of the original inscription. So another day passes and the unprocessed pile of photographs in the "in-tray" is still way higher than the few completed and ready to upload onto the site. We had hoped to have Balls Pond completed by the end of August - but, like an ill-functioning Government Department, I don't see us meeting our targets! With luck we'll be finished by the end of this year - that is, the secular one that finishes 31st December 2009, not the Hebrew one that finishes mid September!
ALS
It's just over 4 months since we visited The Balls Pond Road Cemetery and we've been working flat out on processing the photos ever since. So why do we still have three times as many on our "to-do" list, as we have completed and uploaded onto the site? Well, some of that is down to the mundane demands of everyday living - like going to work, ferrying kids to school and old aunties to hospital, completing the tax returns and booking the car in for a service. In other words, the minutiae of life getting in the way of the serious business to which we, and this site are dedicated
Sometimes we may get caught up in a particular story that leads us down so many varied and interesting byways that, if we didn't call a self-imposed halt to our researches, they could be in danger of developing into a doctoral thesis.
With well over 2700 stones on site, we can now link people across centuries, cemeteries, countries and continents. We haven't yet transcribed Jacob Magnus died 1888 and buried in Balls Pond Road, but the links to him will take us to his distant cousins, Nathan Joseph Magnus, and Judith [Gitele} Joseph Magnus, both buried in Brady Street, and will connect to several other families on the way. The research could be extensive and the links will certainly be many and complex: it will be a fine calculation as to how much time we allow ourselves to spend on this one family
And, sometimes, we just get stuck. For several hours now I've been peering at a picture of a perfectly upright, undamaged stone with not a single visible character to denote who it memorialises. And, yes, I've tried every trick in the PhotoShop handbook - converting to negative, playing with the brightness and contrast. You name it, I've tried it. The stone refuses to give up its secrets.
With luck, we may be able to match it to one of the names recorded on the excellent Balls Pond Road Burial Ground site but we feel we would be short-changing researchers across the world, who may have a personal interest in this individual, if we didn't work overtime to uncover at least a trace of the original inscription. So another day passes and the unprocessed pile of photographs in the "in-tray" is still way higher than the few completed and ready to upload onto the site. We had hoped to have Balls Pond completed by the end of August - but, like an ill-functioning Government Department, I don't see us meeting our targets! With luck we'll be finished by the end of this year - that is, the secular one that finishes 31st December 2009, not the Hebrew one that finishes mid September!
ALS
Sunday, 19 July 2009
Brady Street Jewish Cemetery - a success story!
When we first visited Brady Street Jewish Cemetery back in May 2007 we took photos of the memorial to Miriam Levy, a rare, perhaps unique, example of a Jewish memorial with a bust of a woman. This, presumably is an actual likeness of Miriam, who has been described as a welfare worker who opened the first soup kitchens in the East End.
Unfortunately our original photos were not especially clear; it was a very sunny day and the light and shade made reading the worn inscription almost impossible. So when we heard that Brady was to be opened for a day in April '09 we jumped at the chance of a return visit, eager to finally be able to read the full inscription. Well, hopeful at any rate!
Brady Street is normally locked and the visit was made possible by Babs, a British-Jewry member, who lives in Australia and had found the tombstone of her 5 x great-grandfather, Nathan Raphael (1726 - 21 Sep 1808) on GenPals website.
On her visit to Brady in 2008, she had been unable to find the tombstone so, when the opportunity to visit London arose in April '09, Babs contacted the United Synagogue and organised for the cemetery to be opened. Here is an extract from her marvellous family newsletter:
... the morning of Sunday, 19th April 2009, was set for a reunion of some distant cousins at the grave of their common ancestor - just over 200 years after his death! I suddenly became very nervous, what if I still couldn’t find the grave? I anxiously re-checked Gaby’s instructions and downloaded pictures of the tombstones she said were positioned either side of Nathan’s. Both these tombstones were quite distinctive, with relatively clear inscriptions. I felt reassured; surely I had enough information to ensure success this time round. At the very least, there were several other graves of family members to visit I told myself while trying not to hyper-ventilate.Sunday 19th April was a truly memorable day for me too, it was an absolute pleasure to meet Babs and know that we had helped her locate the burial place of her ancestor and especially to walk around the cemetery seeing descendants visiting the graves of their ancestors. I fully understand the need to keep the cemetery closed but seeing several groups of families paying their respects to the those that died many years ago was a wonderful thing: how long has it been since these graves have been visited by family members?
..... our group decided it might be quicker to split up and search separately. It was not long thereafter that my eagle-eyed husband triumphantly announced “I’ve found it!” As one, my newly-met cousins and I rushed to the scene. The tombstones on either side, we all agreed, clearly matched those identified by Gaby as Nathan’s “neighbours”.
Babs' visit was particularly special, as she had brought some polished stones from the Orange region NSW, Australia, where Nathan Raphael's grandson and patriarch of the Australian branch of the family is buried, to leave as a token of her visit.
Here is a photo (copyright K O'Connor) taken by Babs' husband, with Babs, and family members John and Julia, the polished stones visible on the top of the tombstone.
My time at Brady was nearly up so we took some photos of Miriam Levy's memorial from as many angles as possible and this time we were successful: the details of the main inscription are now included on the entry found here. As yet the details of her life and her involvement with the East End soup kitchens elude us.
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