JEWISH
EAST END OF LONDON PHOTO GALLERY & COMMENTARY
London's East End Synagogues, cemeteries and more......
My personal journey through the Jewish East End of London
The United Brethren Benefit Society – the
evidence on the ground
On
Sunday 14th September two historic cemeteries were open
for the day – the Velho Sephardi Cemetery and the Nuovo Sephardi
cemetery, both in Mile End and both closed for many years. The Velho closed in 1735, while its
successor, the Nuovo, had its last internments in the early years of
the twentieth century. Clues and hints to the lives of our
ancestors were in abundance. In the Velho cemetery faded 17th
century inscriptions in Portuguese reminded of just how foreign the
earliest Jewish immigrants must have seemed to their English hosts,
while in the Nuovo cemetery famous names from Anglo Jewry’s most
celebrated philanthropists adorned grand tombs with grand
inscriptions. Meanwhile, tucked away in more humble corners was
evidence of poverty and the self help organised to relieve it
in a society that predated the welfare state. I am referring to the
Friendly and Benevolent societies and Chevras that abounded in the
Jewish East End of London in the 19th and first half of
the 20th centuries.
On
one diminutive tombstone in the Nuovo cemetery I read the following:
United Brethren Benefit
Society: In memory of Jacob Cohen Belifante (photo left - double
click to enlarge)
The United Brethren Benefit
Society was a typical example of a Friendly Society or ‘Chevra’
created by working class Jewish immigrants. Members would club
together to save a few pennies a week from their modest incomes to
put into their societies, and benefit would be paid back in times of
hardship such as bereavement, unemployment, illness etc.
The United Brethren Benefit
Society is first mentioned in the Jewish Chronicle in an article
dated 1847 when the Society’s president, Mr Lewis Nathan is
presented with an illuminated scroll in a ‘handsome frame’ as a
thank you for having put the Society back onto an even financial
keel. Much later In December 1898 at a special Chanukah service for
members of East London Friendly Societies in the East London
Synagogue, Rectory Square, Stepney, the minister – Reverend J F Stern –
summed up their role thus, “…..the purpose of their service was to
encourage those efforts of self help and brotherly cooperation which
they were making through their several societies in order to
maintain for themselves that personal independence and self respect
which was the basis of individual liberty and the brightest jewel in
the crown of their manhood.”
In 1912 the United Brethren
Friendly Society became the United Brethren Lodge, and amongst those
elected honorary members of the society was the Reverend J F
Stern. During the 1930s the United Brethren are recorded in the
Jewish Chronicle as having made generous donations to organisations
providing relief for German Jewry, and an article in 1947 records
that they were still handing out financial benefits to help with
members’ funeral expenses. What eventually happened to the United
Brethren Lodge is unknown to me, but many would have been the poorer
without organisations like them and the countless people they
helped.
A
United Brethren Benefit Society headstone - a Cohen's grave
(note the hands), Nuovo cemetery, Mile End
(double click
all photos to enlarge)
