A fascinating exhibit of century-old photographs of the Jewish neighborhood around East London’s Spitalfields market opened today (Sept. 20) at the Sandys Road Synagogue, which is in the district and describes itself as “London’s oldest Ashkenazi Synagogue and the last fully functioning Jewish community in what was once the very heart of the Jewish East End.”
The photographs were taken on Saturday, April 20, 1912 by a man called C.A. Mathew. Little is known about Mathew, except that he had taken up photography in 1911 and died in 1916. What is know is that, according to the exhibit description, on April 20 a century ago, he:
walked out of Liverpool St Station with a camera in hand. No-one knows for certain why he chose to wander through the streets of Spitalfields taking photographs that day. It may be that the pictures were a commission, though this seems unlikely as they were never published. I prefer another theory, that he was waiting for the train home to Brightlingsea in Essex where he had a studio in Tower St, and simply walked out of the station, taking these pictures to pass the time. It is not impossible that these exceptional photographs owe their existence to something as mundane as a delayed train.
The photos, never displayed in public before, have been preserved in the Bishopsgate Institute. They show streets crowded with people, and especially children.
How populated these pictures are. The streets of Spitalfields were fuller in those days – doubly surprising when you remember that this was a Jewish neighbourhood then and these photographs were taken upon the Sabbath.
For more information see the Sandys Row Synagogue web site
A slide show of 10 of the photos can be seen HERE.
2 comments on “Exhibit of Historic Photographs of Jewish East London”
Really to repeat what Pam Shoebridge has written, but for those of us living in the UK but at a distance from London (in my case West Wales).
In April 1912 my late father and mother would have been 4 and three months before birth respectively. They would have loved to have seen these photos. A portrait of my Dad aged 12 (by his very talented oldest brother) showed him in clothes just like those depicted.
Any possiblity of showing the rest of the photos to those of us unable to get to England.
I Live in New Zealand
Thanks