Bill H. Jenkins

Buccleuch Place: Lurie’s Butcher Shop

 Jewish History  No Responses »
Dec 182017
 

Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh EH8 9LW7-Buccleuch Place-33

Lurie’s Butcher Shop was established by Joe’s uncle Lewis Lurie, an immigrant. Under Joe’s stewardship, the shop flourished. After World War II Lurie’s was the kosher butcher in Edinburgh. Joe Lurie was the social glue of the community. He bought his meat at the meat market and poultry from local farmers. The animals were slaughtered by a shochet. Lurie’s also sold delicacies like pickled tongue, and, for Burns Night (in late January) made his own kosher haggis. But the shop closed when Joe retired in 1986, and today kosher meat is delivered from Glasgow and Manchester. Opposite is 33 Buccleuch Street. Apparently, no.33 (Dray un draysik) was an unofficial centre of Jewish life in the 1920s and 30s where a minyan could be assembled by knocking on the doors on the stair.

Luries, 7 Buccleuch Place

Luries, 7 Buccleuch Place

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Livingstone Place

 Jewish History  No Responses »
Dec 182017
 

Livingstone Place, Edinburgh EH9 1PALivingstone Place

Before us is the edge of the Grange, which some Jews might have aspired to at the turn of the 20th century, but few would have reached until after World War II. For those of more modest means, Marchmont provided good solid housing – a great improvement over the old quarter. Even into the 1970s, Marchmont’s Arden Street – perhaps known to you as the home of Ian Rankin’s Inspector Rebus – had the largest concentration of Jewish families in Edinburgh. Today, the community is dispersed. Gone is the desire of most of those attending synagogue to walk to it. Although there is still a perception amongst Edinburgh’s Jews as to what areas remain ‘Jewish’ (and what areas are distinctly non-Jewish) it is lodged more in nostalgia than in fact.

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East Crosscauseway, Kleinberg’s Bakery

 Jewish History  1 Response »
Dec 182017
 

East Crosscauseway, Edinburgh RH8 9HQKleinberg's bakery

We are now in the heart of the Jewish area of the early 20th century. This is where many Jews lived, and certainly where they shopped. By 1914 there were four kosher butchers; and there were bakers: Mrs Sager on Guthrie Street, Mr Crouse and Mr Planlizy on St Leonards Street, and Sam Bialik on the Pleasance where queues gathered on a Sunday morning for bagels. Kleinberg’s on East Crosscauseway was the last Jewish baker in Edinburgh. The bakery was opened by Arthur’s father before World War I. Since Arthur was 16 he ran the bakery until he retired, at the age of 89, in 2005. Arthur is remembered most of all, for his challah, the sweet bread eaten on shabbat, and he revealed the recipe to the community shortly before his death.

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Cranston Street, looking towards Calton Hill

 Jewish History  No Responses »
Dec 182017
 

Cranston Street, Edinburgh EH8 8BECranston Street

In 1794, one Hyman Lyon is among the 18 Jews in the register of aliens. He is famous for two reasons: 1. his book Important Discoveries in Chiropody. 2. his purchase from the City Council of a burial plot on Calton Hill for himself and his wife. This private mausoleum was rediscovered in 2013 under the slope behind the Observatory. Infamously, Lyon was a defendant in a libel action where, ‘all parties were Jews’. Rose Nathan accused others of ‘spreading rumours that she had been found naked in bed with other men’. She won her case, but it must have caused much disturbance in this tiny community. On St Mary’s Street observe a plaque commemorating Henry Littlejohn, Edinburgh’s first medical officer of health, whose sanitary improvements transformed this part of the city.

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Drummond Street

 Jewish History  No Responses »
Dec 182017
 

Drumond Street, Edinburgh EH8 9RWDrummond Street

The community expanded between 1880 and 1914, the years of the great westward migration of Jews from Eastern Europe. The Southside of the city became the place of residence for the recent immigrants who largely originated in the Lithuanian part of the Russian Empire. Bustling with people, the soundscape would have largely yielded Yiddish accents. In the 1891, 1901 and 1911 Censuses we find the Rudom Family at different addresses on the Pleasance. Jacob Rudom worked as a travelling salesman, or a ‘trebbler’ in Scots Yiddish. Polly Rudom gave birth to 9 children; the records reveal that only one of her children died in infancy, a better than average survival rate. After World War II, city planning changed this part of town such that both street layout and buildings today are different from those inhabited by Jewish immigrants.

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6 Millerfield Place: Sciennes Primary School

 Jewish History  No Responses »
Dec 182017
 

6 Millerfield Place, Edinburgh EH9 1LW6 Millerfield Place

6 Millerfield Place was the family home of Edinburgh’s most famous rabbi, Dr Salis Daiches, the father of literary scholar David Daiches. An immigrant himself, during his ministry from 1919 to 1945 he brought together recent arrivals and established residents, and built Salisbury Road Synagogue, which had room for approximately 2,000 worshippers. It remains home to the (now much smaller) Edinburgh Hebrew Congregation. At the end of this cul-de-sac is Sciennes Primary School. Until the founding of Calderwood Lodge Primary School in Glasgow in 1962 there was no Jewish school in Scotland. All Jewish children attended mainstream schools. From 1914 Hebrew classes were taking place in Sciennes School on weekday afternoons, the Education Board of the city offering the facilities of the school to the Jewish community free of charge.

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Bishops’ Close

 Jewish History  2 Responses »
Dec 182017
 

Bishop’s Close, 129 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1SGBishop's Close

We begin here in the Old Town, the heart of the medieval city, at Bishop’s Close, off the High Street between the Mitre and Royal Mile Tavern. In the early 19th century the Old Town was overcrowded and insanitary. The New Town, north of Princes Street, was built with open spaces and large windows. The first synagogue was founded by 20 families in 1817. In the 1841 census we can identify 50 Jewish households in Edinburgh. Of those, only eight households lived in the fashionable New Town area. The others settled in the Old Town or in the St Leonards district to the south. In 1841 the Emmanuel Family, having moved from England, lived here in Bishop’s Close: Ezekiel, Rachel, and three sons. There is no trace of them in later records. From 1880 until 1914, as the economic and social conditions in Eastern Europe worsened, many others took their place.

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Site of Boyd’s Inn

 Scottish Enlightenment  No Responses »
Sep 192017
 

Site of Boyd's InnBoyd’s Entry, St Mary St, Edinburgh EH8 8JW

This pub was where James Boswell, Edinburgh lawyer and biographer of Samuel Johnson, met up with Johnson before they embarked on their famous tour of the Hebrides in 1773. Boswell had first met Johnson when he was living in London in 1763 and the two had become close friends. Johnson wanted to visit the Highlands in part to try to prove that the supposed works of the ancient Gaelic poet Ossian, which were causing a literary sensation at the time, were not genuine, but had in fact been written by their supposed translator, James Macpherson. Many of the leading figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, including Hugh Blair and Adam Ferguson, energetically supported the authenticity of the work.

Caricature of Johnson and Boswell walking down the Royal Mile.

Caricature of Johnson and Boswell walking down the Royal Mile.

Plaque in Boyd's Entry.

Plaque in Boyd’s Entry.

Portrait of James Macpherson (1736–96) by George Romney.

Portrait of James Macpherson (1736–96) by George Romney.

Ossian Singing by Nicolai Abildgaard, 1787.

Ossian Singing by Nicolai Abildgaard, 1787.

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Site of the first theatre in Edinburgh

 Scottish Enlightenment  No Responses »
Sep 192017
 

Playhouse Close.Playhouse Close, 196 Canongate, Edinburgh EH8 8BN

In the seventeenth century the Church of Scotland had traditionally taken a very negative view of the theatre, which they saw as promoting immorality. The first theatre in Glasgow was burned down as late as 1752 by a mob incited by hard-line ministers. It was therefore a sign of changing times when the Canongate Theatre, the first theatre in Edinburgh, was successfully opened in 1747 near what is now Playhouse Close without major incident. There was, however, a riot in the theatre in 1749 when some English officers requested that the orchestra play a song celebrating the battle of Culloden. When instead they played ‘You’re welcome, Charlie Stuart’ the officers attacked the musicians and chaos ensued.

Plaque in Playhouse Close.

Plaque in Playhouse Close.

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Adam Ferguson’s House (Sciennes Hill House)

 Scottish Enlightenment  No Responses »
Sep 192017
 

Adam Ferguson's House.3 Sciennes House Place, Edinburgh EH9 1NN

Adam Ferguson was professor of moral philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, and, as the author of the Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767), is often considered one of the founders of sociology. He regularly entertained many of the leading figures of the Scottish Enlightenment at his house in Sciennes. In Ferguson’s day the house was on the very edge of the city and, because of its remoteness, his friends jokingly referred to it as ‘Kamchatka’ after the peninsula in Siberia. In the winter of 1786/7 he hosted a dinner here at which the two most famous Scottish writers of the period, Robert Burns and the young Walter Scott, met for the first and only time.

Portrait of Adam Ferguson (1723–1816) by Sir Joshua Reynolds.

Portrait of Adam Ferguson (1723–1816) by Sir Joshua Reynolds.

Plaque commemorating the meeting of Robert Burns and Walter Scott at the house of Adam Ferguson.

Plaque commemorating the meeting of Robert Burns and Walter Scott at the house of Adam Ferguson.

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National Records of Scotland – Adam Ferguson (1723-1816)

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