Development of the Liverpool Jewry Historical Database

Abstract

The Liverpool Jewish community was the earliest to be formed in the north of England (c1745) and for much of the 19th century, it was the largest UK Jewish community outside London. However, examination of this important minority community from a social, demographic, and genealogical perspective has been severely hampered by the lack of a unified source of information about Jewish individuals and families resident in the area during the 18th and 19th centuries. This paper describes how a searchable database of all Jewish persons with a documented connection with the Liverpool area, from the earliest times to 1881, has been produced as a resource for historical, demographic, sociological, and genealogical research. It explains how Jewish individuals were identified by a novel use of distinctive names, occupations, and birthplaces in the secular census and vital records and, in combination with extant records held within the Jewish community, have been used to produce a database of several thousand persons, linked into family groups. It concludes that the principal aim of the project has been achieved, and the approach could act as a template for other religion/ethnicity-based groups.

1. Background

Liverpool is a major city and seaport, the heart of the Merseyside conurbation, situated on the north-west coast of England. The Liverpool Jewish community was the earliest to be formed in the north of England (c1745) since the resettlement of Jews in England, which took place in the Cromwellian era (in 1656) (Roth 1964; Endelman 2002). For much of the 19th century, Liverpool had the largest UK Jewish community outside London (Lipman 1951). However, examination of this important minority community from a social, demographic, and genealogical perspective has been severely hampered by the lack of a unified source of information about Jewish individuals and families resident in the area during the 18th and 19th centuries.

The aim of the project reported on in this paper was to produce a searchable database of all Jewish persons with a documented connection with the Liverpool area, from the earliest times, as a resource for historical, demographic, sociological, and genealogical research. Phase 1 of the project, which has been carried out from 2020 to 2024, focused on the period from the 18th century up to and including the 1881 national census. The cut-off year of 1881 was selected as it was a census year and also marked the approximate start of the marked increase in migration of Jews from Eastern Europe to the UK and elsewhere (Lipman 1954; Ballard 1996), for whom earlier information would be difficult to verify. However, a potential Phase 2 would extend the project into the 20th century.

A key element, from a genealogical perspective, is the linking of individuals into family groups, rather than simply producing a list of names, dates, and addresses. Those familiar with the format of a GEDCOM genealogical data file will recognize the use of FAM (family identification numbers), with FAMS numbers indicating the family identification number of the family in which the individual is a spouse, and FAMC numbers which link an individual to the family in which he or she is a child. These FAM numbers are built into the database.

Whilst the details of the approach set out here are specific to Liverpool, in general terms, the methodology could be applied to any other locality with access to community historical data and national census records.

There were two specific drivers, which set the project in motion:

• All the fieldwork for the Liverpool Necrology and Burials Database Project (Sapiro 2020a; Merseyside Jewish Representative Council 2020) had just been completed. It seemed rather incomplete to focus only on persons who had died (and been buried) in Liverpool. So, the first motivation was to consider to what extent the scope of material collated could be expanded to cover all persons who had lived in Liverpool.
• A large team of volunteers, under the supervision and guidance of Petra Laidlaw, produced the Anglo-Jewry database (AJDB)—an attempt to list all Jews living in the UK in 1851 (Laidlaw 2011). With one exception, the number of entries found by town broadly corresponds with historical estimates of the size of the Jewish population of each town found in earlier published works. The exception is Liverpool. As of the end of 2019, there were about 970 Liverpool (or Birkenhead) residents listed in AJDB (though later analysis as part of the current project led to the removal of about 50 of these entries either through their being duplicated, being resident elsewhere, or being found not to be Jewish). However, V. D. Lipman (1951) and Todd M. Endelman (2002) quote figures of 2500 and 1500, respectively. The second initial motivation was thus to find if there was any validity in these estimates, by trying to identify further Jewish residents of 1851 Liverpool and its environs.

This project is being carried out solely by the author—although he has made use of some records transcribed in the past by others. In addition, he has liaised closely with Petra Laidlaw regarding potential additions to AJDB and a few points of methodology.

2. Phase 1A Data Sources and Methodology

The first stage of the project was to collate all the available information from extant Jewish sources, for individuals and families who had a probable documented presence in the Liverpool area prior to the end of 1881. These initial sources included the following:

• The 1816 ‘Register of the Jews of Liverpool’ (Liverpool Hebrew Congregation 1816). This is a handwritten volume, in use from 1805 until 1816, though it makes reference to some earlier events for persons in Liverpool after 1805. It lists about 350 individuals in family groups, showing in many cases dates of birth, marriage, and death.
• The birth register for the Liverpool Hebrew (Seel Street) Congregation (Seel Street Synagogue Birth Register 1817–1873). This covers births for families of members from 1817 to 1873. It has about 720 entries.
• The birth register for the Liverpool Old Hebrew (Princes Road) Congregation Birth Register (1873–1915). This follows on from the above register and covers the 1873 to 1915 period, including about 90 births prior to the end of 1881.
• The marriage register for the Liverpool Hebrew (Seel Street) Congregation (Seel Street Synagogue Marriage Register 1817–1842). About 70 marriages from 1817 until 1837 (the start of civil registration) are included.
• The death register for the Liverpool Hebrew (Seel Street) Congregation (Seel Street Synagogue Death Register 1818–1849). This includes about 260 entries for the period 1818 to 1849.
• The Liverpool Old Hebrew (Seel Street and later Princes Road) Congregation marriage register (Liverpool Old Hebrew Congregation Marriage Register 1837 to Date). This covers the period from the introduction of civil registration in September 1837 to the 21st century. About 270 marriages took place before the end of 1881. A further 330 marriages (some as late as the 1920s) thought or known to include participants born by 1881 have also been included in the project.
• Marriages under the auspices of the Liverpool New Hebrew Congregation. In total, about 1880 marriages were conducted between the first in the congregation’s Pilgrim Street synagogue in 1844 and the last at Greenbank Drive in 2007; here we are primarily interested in 19th-century marriages. Fortunately, the New Hebrew Congregation’s registers are amongst those processed by the volunteers at the Lancashire BMD project (Lancashire BMD 2020–2022). Unfortunately, the Lancashire BMD volunteers had only transcribed the marriage year and names of the bride and groom—so no ages, addresses, or father’s names were included. Nevertheless, information on 190 marriages that took place before the end of 1881 is included. In addition, participants in about 370 marriages that took place between 1882 and 1906 have been selected. The 1906 cut-off date has been selected as likely to include mainly participants born before 1882, with relatively few born after 1881—with the intention of ascertaining birth dates from other sources. Individuals were also found in the marriage records of the New Beth Hamedrash (160 marriages) and Fountains Road (60 marriages) congregations.
• Cemetery sources previously used to develop the Liverpool burials database, identifying persons born before 1882: Eastham’s 1902 photograph of Upper Frederick Street burial ground—2 entries; Oakes Street headstone transcriptions prepared in 1903—45 records; Deane Road cemetery register—about 1100 records; Green Lane cemetery 1979 partial survey—about 380 records; Rice Lane cemetery register—about 350 records; Broadgreen cemetery registers—about 610 records; Long Lane cemetery register and other documents—about 150 records; West Derby Cemetery—Jewish Section (Lowerhouse Lane) register—560 records; Allerton Cemetery—Gen 1C section (Reform) and Jewish (Orthodox) sections—60 records.1
• Anglo-Jewry Database (Laidlaw 2020). As mentioned above, the AJDB already included over 900 Liverpool area residents in 1851. However, the AJDB also includes information about the life course of individuals, some of whom, although not resident in Liverpool in 1851, were found in Liverpool at other points in their lives. Indeed, AJDB included (at the end of 2019), about 150 individuals born in Liverpool, but not resident there in 1851, and 250 other people not born there but resident only at some point other than 1851. As care was taken to validate all entries prior to their acceptance into AJDB, only limited further verification of ‘Jewishness’ was carried out at this stage.

At this first stage, therefore, 810 birth records, 1230 marriage records (×2), 260 death records, 3260 burial records, and 1720 ‘1816 register’ or AJDB records were collated. This initial dataset of over 8500 records covers fewer than this number of individuals, as a number of persons would have both a birth and a marriage, or a death and a burial record, etc. A considerable period of time was spent comparing records, linking together multiple events for individuals, and linking individuals into family groups. This process reduced the number of records (individuals) down to about 6800.

Note, of course, that most of the Seel Street and Princes Road birth records also included the names of one or both parents. Clearly, all the mothers would have been present at the Liverpool birth of the child, and it would be reasonable to assume that the majority of the fathers would have been in the area around that time. The birth records could, therefore, give rise to records for parents as well as the child involved—but the parent records were NOT generated at this stage. At a later stage (Phase 1B), the parental information was processed, and this allowed an additional 200 records for persons not already included in the database through another route to be added.

Similarly, many of the marriage records record the name of the participants’ fathers (and in some cases mothers); however, there would be less justification in assuming that participants’ parents would have a Liverpool connection in the year of the marriage—so although the parents’ names have been recorded on marriage participants’ records, no additional records for the parents have been generated.

3. Phase 1B Data Sources and Methodology

Clearly, the sources so far mentioned include only Jewish persons; however, only families actually associated with the Liverpool congregations and having a birth, marriage, or death event in Liverpool would be picked up in Phase 1A of the project. The net had to be cast more widely, if Jewish persons were not associated with a life event recorded through one of the Liverpool congregations but, nevertheless, having a documented presence in the Liverpool area were to be included.

The second principal stage of the study has been to investigate secular records (principally census and birth, marriage, and death records) for Jewish individuals and families resident in the Liverpool area. Given the initial focus on finding whether there were additional Liverpool candidates for the AJDB, the 1851 census was investigated first. Permission was sought and granted to gain access to the full Integrated Census Microdata (I-CeM) dataset.2 I-CeM was a joint project of the University of Essex and the University of Leicester, working in conjunction with the commercial genealogy company FindMyPast, to produce a fully searchable database of certain UK censuses—insofar as this project is concerned, the 1851, 1861, and 1881 England and Wales censuses. Access to the database allowed for some semi-automated initial screening of Liverpool area census returns to be carried out.

Religion was not recorded in England and Wales censuses until 2001, so there is no direct way of identifying Jews in the 1851 census. The method adopted to produce an initial census dataset for further examination was to search for particular surnames, forenames, places of birth, and occupations that had a greater likelihood of association with Jewish residents.

The AJDB includes about 2300 different surnames covering the 30,000 individuals in the database. In contrast, the 1851 England and Wales census of the population of over 17 million persons includes over 330,000 different surnames. Clearly, the vast majority of surnames in the wider population had no Jewish holders. Of the surnames found in AJDB, only about 850 are held by more than three individuals (and some of those held by only one or two persons may be mis-spellings). Indeed, 10 surnames—Levy, Cohen, Jacobs, Isaacs, Solomon, Abrahams, Davis, Harris, Nathan, and Phillips—cover almost 30% of all persons in the database. Of these 10 names, Davis, Phillips, and to a lesser extent Harris, are regularly found in the wider population, but the remaining seven are used predominantly by Jewish persons. Indeed, by comparing the numbers of holders present in the AJDB with the 1851 census, a list of over 400 surnames more likely to be held by Jews than the wider population was identified.

Similarly, the 10 most frequently found forenames in AJDB—Sarah, Henry, Joseph, Hannah, Abraham, Elizabeth, Esther, Samuel, Isaac, and Rebecca—also cover about 30% of the database. However, in this case, most of these names are also popular in the wider community. Nevertheless, a selection of over 100 forenames was found, which were disproportionately held by Jews.

The earliest example in the UK of attempting to identify Jewish people by reference to names in secular data dates from 1975. Kosmin and Grizzard trawled through the 1971 electoral roll of the London Borough of Hackney to identify the likely number and proportion of Jewish residents in the various electoral wards of the borough, applying these proportions to summary tabulations from the 1971 census (Kosmin and Grizzard 1975). Later examples include Waterman and Kosmin’s use of telephone directories for the London area, and their follow-up work for parts of London (Waterman and Kosmin 1986, 1988). The use of distinctive Jewish names has been made use of a number of occasions in studies in the USA; Himmelfarb et al. have provided a useful summary of the technique (Himmelfarb et al. 1983). It is very important to note that the approach used in this study differs from that used in earlier studies. In all those other studies, the approach used only names, which were highly popular amongst Jews—because in most cases, the aim was to locate concentrations of Jews or to estimate the proportion of Jewish people in a population, by comparison with the average density of the key names in a control location. That is, there was no need or attempt to identify all Jewish individuals as such as, apart from address information, the datasets did not include other characteristics, which could be linked directly to individuals. In the case of this study, the aim was to identify all Jewish persons individually and associate them with age, gender, birthplace, and occupation information found in their census records. The list of names used needed to include all names, where there was a significant likelihood of the person found being Jewish—even if that name was used only by a few people. Appendix A provides more details of the key names identified as being relevant to this study.

Place of birth also varies between Jews and the wider population. However, even amongst Jews, place of birth is likely to vary between different parts of the country. So, in analyzing places of birth, the comparison was made not between the whole of AJDB and the totality of the 1851 census, but between the about 900 AJDB entries for Liverpool, and the 1851 census records for only the Greater Liverpool area (about 430,000 individuals). It was interesting to note that the proportions of the Liverpool AJDB entries born in England (73%) and more particularly in Liverpool (44%) were actually higher than for the wider Liverpool population (68% and 42%, respectively)—largely arising through 20% of the wider population being born in Ireland (1% for the Jewish element). About 14% of Liverpool Jews were born in London (compared with just 1% of the wider population). Other places where the Jewish proportion considerably exceeded the wider population were Plymouth, Germany/Prussia, Poland, Netherlands, Austria, and Russia. Most London birthplace individuals in the Liverpool census records are simply described as ‘London’, or ‘Middlesex’; however, a small proportion did give the name of the parish or suburb, which allowed some of those born in Whitechapel and surrounding areas (the focus of the Jewish community in London) to be highlighted.

Only one earlier example of using place of birth to produce an estimate of the Jewish population has been located. As long ago as 1905, S Rosenbaum (later Rowson) used the birthplace of Russia, Poland, or Romania as equivalent to being Jewish, to estimate the Jewish population of various parts of London, within summary tables from the 1901 census (Rosenbaum 1905). This approach was probably reasonably accurate only for those areas of London, primarily the ‘east end’, where the majority of Jews present would have been post-1881 immigrants from Eastern Europe. In other parts with long-established communities, a large proportion would be British-born (Endelman 2002).

A similar analysis was carried out for occupations, again focusing on Liverpool records only. The top five occupations amongst Liverpool Jews in 1851 were watch/clock makers, glaziers, living on private means, hawkers, and jewelers. None of these occupations appears in the top 10 most popular occupations for the wider community. In the wider community, the top five were general domestic servants, general laborers, dock laborers, messengers and watchmen, and dressmakers—none of which feature in the Jewish top 10 (indeed three of these do not feature at all). Taking account of the relative numbers in the Jewish and wider populations, glaziers, jewelers, dentists, toy dealers, and watch/clock makers were selected as occupations to be considered further. Later analysis added bankers and cigar makers to this list.

Census data were then searched for entries that included the surnames, forenames, birthplaces, or occupations identified, and a score attached to each census entry depending on a weighted number of the parameters parameters that were found. The highest score for any individual in a household was then applied to all the members of that household. This process identified about 130 additional households in which at least one individual ‘matched’ against at least two of the parameters. These households were considered individually. In most cases, the ‘Jewishness’ of members of the household was determined by examining the whole household collectively. In addition to those households, any individual in the Phase 1A database of 6800 records, who was thought to be alive in 1851, but not already in the AJDB, was attempted to be found in the census records.

This examination of the 1851 census records took several months, but it did result in about 180 additional individuals being added as Liverpool residents in 1851 to the AJDB. All these additions were discussed with and agreed to by Petra Laidlaw. In total, the project database currently includes about 1130 Jewish Liverpool area residents in 1851—still below the estimates quoted by Lipman and Endelman, which now appear to overstate the situation.

A similar exercise was then carried out for the 1861 census. The process identified over 1300 Liverpool area census addresses. About 530 of these were for persons already included in the AJDB though not necessarily with a census address, and 1861 addresses were found for about 90 of the 180 individuals who had been added to AJDB through the 1851 census process mentioned above. About 380 individuals were newly added to the database as a result of their identification in the 1861 census, and over 300 other entries (previously added as a result of birth, marriage, or cemetery entries) had an 1861 census address (and occupation, age, and place of birth) located for them. Overall, the 1861 Jewish population of the Liverpool area is currently assessed as 1400 persons.

The 1841 census was then examined using a broadly similar approach. For that year, about 720 census entries were identified. Over 400 of these were individuals already included in the AJDB (though not necessarily with an 1841 census address), and about 70 were for individuals who had been identified through the 1851 or 1861 census examination. About 120 were completely new additions to the database, and about 100 were in the database due to a birth, marriage, or burial record, but their 1841 census address in Liverpool had not previously been ascertained.

At this point (the end of Phase 1B), the database held information on almost 7900 individuals. All were born before c1882, and all had a documented connection with Liverpool at some point in their lives. A place of birth had not been discovered for a number of entries so, in some cases, the first documented connection with the Liverpool area may prove to have occurred after 1881—in which case, these individuals will ultimately form part of the Phase 2 of the project—identifying those people with a documented connection with Liverpool only after 1881.

4. Phase 1C

Prior to investigating the 1871 and 1881 censuses (the main element of Phase 1C), an examination of the civil (General Register Office—GRO) birth, marriage, and death indexes was undertaken. The focus of this work primarily made use of surnames already in the database. Where appropriate records were found, it allowed mothers’ maiden names to be ascertained for births allowing these to be established where the mother’s maiden name was not known (which can confirm whether a child can be regarded as probably Jewish), and it allowed persons not (yet) found in censuses to be allocated to the correct family. Marriage records allow some marriages to non-Jewish spouses to be found (as these did not, of course, appear in the records of the Old and New Hebrew Congregations). Many of the marriage records are available at the Lancashire BMD website—which (unlike the GRO index) indicates the auspices under which the marriage took place. Where the spouse was found not to be Jewish, no record for that person is included in the database (though they are recorded on the Jewish individual’s record). It also avoids the addition to the database of children who at first glance might be anticipated to be Jewish.3 The deaths index also permits some of the missing burials for the Green Lane cemetery (whose register was lost in the Greenbank Drive synagogue fire of 1965) to be potentially identified.

Birth registration quarter of the year (which is what the indexes provide) was found for about 940 individuals—about 910 were born in the Liverpool area; the other 30 were born elsewhere but were already in the database because of a Liverpool connection at another point in their lives. About 130 Liverpool-born persons who had not previously been found in Jewish records were added to the database.

About 20 individuals were found in the Lancashire BMD marriages—most were church or register office marriages and were to non-Jewish spouses. The GRO marriage index revealed about 90 quarter-of-year marriage dates, predominantly for persons already in the database, two-thirds of whom were married away from the Liverpool area. The GRO death index provided death registration quarter information for about 330 individuals, predominantly registered in the Liverpool area. All but 50 of these were already found in Jewish records, with some overlap with persons found in the GRO birth index. Overall, examination of the birth marriage and death indexes led to about 180 additions to the database.

The 1881 census was then examined in a similar manner to the 1851 and 1861 censuses, using the I-CeM dataset. This process identified 2330 individuals with a Liverpool area address in 1881. About 290 of these were already listed in the AJDB, and 190 had been added through the 1851 or 1861 census analysis. Analysis of the 1881 census allowed about 970 individuals to be added to the database, though about 500 of these were from families for which other members had already been included in the database. Overall, the database includes about 2350 persons resident in the Liverpool area in 1881.

The analysis of the 1871 census found 1850 relevant individuals with Liverpool addresses. About 1220 of these had previously been located either in the AJDB or the other censuses. Around 330 individuals were added to the database as a result of examining the 1871 census, though about 120 of these were from families already represented in the database. About 1900 residents of Liverpool in 1871 are include in the database.

It is worth saying a little more about the census analysis. As the 1841 and 1871 censuses are not included in the I-CeM, the techniques for examining those censuses varied from the other ones. For the 1851, 1861, and 1881 censuses, the whole Liverpool area dataset of several hundred thousand entries was selected. An algorithm was used to score each record based on the surnames, forenames, places of birth, and occupations coded. The highest score obtained by any individual in a household was then applied to the household as a whole, and the households (and their individual members) were sorted by household score. Focusing initially on the households with the highest scores, each was then examined to determine whether, based on the forenames of the household collectively, it would be reasonable to assume that the household was Jewish. Thus, for those three censuses, the complete dataset was gradually reduced to leave only the probable Jewish families. The approach meant that individuals in multi-person households were more likely to be ‘accepted’ as Jewish. Individuals living on their own, or persons lodging in households where other household members did not share their surname, were less likely to be selected, as there were no other relevant persons whose characteristics (primarily forenames) could be used to provide some corroboration of likely ‘Jewishness’.

Although the I-CeM is indeed a very useful resource, it was by no means straightforward to use in the context of this study. This was largely because many of the Jewish surnames are of foreign origin, and many were inaccurately transcribed when the I-CeM database was being prepared—making identifying appropriate surnames for this study sometimes problematic. To a limited extent, Soundex systems were tried—both regular (see Lait and Randell 1996) and specifically Jewish (see Beider and Morse 2008)—to try and identify mistranscribed names, but frequently reliance had to be placed on forename/place of birth/occupation information to retrieve the situation. To a slightly lesser extent, the same issues apply to forenames; even place of birth had issues—‘Hamburg’ as a place of birth was sometimes listed as ‘Hanbury, Staffordshire’ in the dataset, and poor validation had allocated some Scottish counties to England.

The analysis of the 1841 and 1871 censuses had to be carried out completely manually using subscriptions to genealogy websites FindMyPast, MyHeritage, and Ancestry and searching primarily for surnames. Each of these sites provides a facility to search for terms with some variability around a specific spelling, reducing the impact of transcription errors in foreign surnames. Additionally, place of birth information in the 1841 census is limited to ‘same county’, ‘different England and Wales county’, ‘Scotland’, ‘Ireland’, or ‘foreign’. In effect, the list of probable Jewish individuals on the 1841 and 1871 censuses was built up from zero, rather than starting with the full dataset and eliminating households for the I-CeM censuses.

The census analysis was, to a degree, iterative. For example, if a Jewish household was found in the 1871 census but had not been identified in the examination of the 1861 or 1881 censuses, then those censuses were re-examined to see if a previous or later address for the family could be found (anywhere in England and Wales). This approach was applied to all entries found in each census.

In parallel with the census analysis, a number of other sources were examined to add new entries to the database or infill additional information for existing entries.

The most important of these, listed in descending order of information added, were as follows:

• List of first seat holders of Seat Street Synagogue (1808)
• Samuel Yates’ circumcision register (Yates 1820)
• The History and Genealogy of the Jewish families of Yates and Samuel of Liverpool (Wolf and Samuel 1901)
• The Seel Street cashbook (Seel Street Synagogue 1806)
• England and Wales Government Probate Death Index 1858–2019 and England and Wales Index to Death Duty Registers 1796–1903.4
• The Seel Street subscribers found in ‘Subscription and Accompt Book for the Intended New Synagogue’ (Joseph 1804)
• Gore’s and other Liverpool Directories
• 1801 census enumerators handbooks (Laxton 1980)
• Palgrave Dictionary of Anglo-Jewish History (Rubinstein and Jolles 2011)
• The Jewish Victorian (Berger 1999)
• The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Matthew et al. 2004)

Probably, the most unexpected additional resources used were baptism records. Bodies such as the London Society for Promoting Christianity Among the Jews and the Liverpool Institute for Inquiring Jews were set up in the early 19th century with the aim of converting Jews to Christianity. Henry Samuel Joseph and Moses Margoliouth were associated with these two bodies. Both men were devout Jews who were baptized in Liverpool, became Anglican clergymen, and encouraged the conversion of other Jews in Liverpool (Wasserstein 1996; Ruderman 2019). The database includes the names of about 30 proselytes—mainly baptized in the 1830s at the ‘Hebrew Church’ (NOT a synagogue but a mission set specifically to convert Jews to Christianity) and St Simon’s church in Liverpool. No later trace of any of these converts reverting to Judaism has been found in Jewish records.

The final stage of Phase 1C was an additional check for duplicate entries. Specifically, consideration was given to persons with the same or similar names apparently born within 10 years of each other. Where it was clear that two records were highly likely to refer to the same individual, the records were merged. In all other cases (about 1800 entries), a code was appended to the record either indicating that it was unlikely that two or more records belonged to the same person, or that there was clear-cut evidence of the entries being unique; however, considerable doubt remained regarding about 320 entries where it was possible that two or three entries related to the same person, or where it was possible that one record could be associated with one or other of two clearly distinct persons. The additional codes flag up these areas of doubt, but these records have not been merged.

5. The Current Make-Up of the Database

Following the completion of phase 1C, the database contained about 10,300 records.

Table 1. Database entries summarized by birth era and date of earliest Liverpool connection.

Birth/Death Period	Earliest Documented Liverpool Area Connection
	All Records	Prior to 1882	1882 or Later	None Found
Died before 1851	410	410	0	0
Assumed died before 1851	40	40	0	0
Alive in 1851	3740	3160	570	<10
Born before 1851 unclear if alive in 1851	580	570	0	10
Born 1852–61	1270	1020	2450	<5
Born 1861–71	1730	980	750	<5
Born 1871–81	2360	960	1400	0
Born after 1881	200	0	200	0
Total	10330	7140	3170	20

The bold column highlights the ‘core pre-1882 database’ as explained in the main text.

summarizes the records in the database by period of birth and date of earliest documented connection with the Liverpool area (figures in tables have been rounded).

The birth/death period categories were selected to differentiate between those individuals who would qualify (subject to their place of residence being in the UK) for inclusion in the AJDB—that is, just the ‘alive in 1851’ category. Many in the next category might qualify, but no evidence of their being alive in or after 1851 has been found. The entries ‘born after 1881’ consist of marriage partners of individuals born by 1881, retained in the database for completeness. The final column shows a small number of entries taken into the database, but actually, no direct documented connection to Liverpool has been found—these are all entries from the Old Hebrew Congregation birth register; clearly, their families were associated with the congregation, but these were births which took place as close as Preston, or as far away as Rio de Janeiro, but no Liverpool address could be found for them later in their lives. The ‘1882 or later’ column includes persons who were married or buried in Liverpool after 1881, but their year of arrival in Liverpool has not been identified. Thus, only 7140 entries in the ‘prior to 1882’ column (highlighted in bold) can be considered as warranting their place in the core pre-1882 database.

Clearly, the full list of persons in the core pre-1882 database cannot be presented here. However, the following tables and text provide an overview of the individuals and families included. Eighteen surnames are sufficient to cover almost 40% of the entire list. Indeed, half of individuals bear one of 16 male forenames or 16 female forenames. These names are shown in

Table 2. Most frequent surnames and forenames found in the core pre-1882 database.

Surname	Proportion	Male Forename	Proportion	Female Forename	Proportion
Cohen	5.6%	Abraham	5.0%	Sarah	8.2%
Levy/Levi	5.4%	Henry	5.0%	Rachel/Rachael	5.1%
Samuel(s)	3.4%	Lewis/Louis	4.8%	Esther	4.6%
Abraham(s)	2.1%	Isaac	4.4%	Hannah	4.2%
Isaac(s)	2.0%	Joseph	4.3%	Fanny	3.4%
Harris	1.9%	Samuel	4.0%	Annie/Ann	3.4%
Joseph	1.9%	David	3.7%	Rebecca	3.3%
Jacob(s)	1.8%	Jacob	3.6%	Leah	2.7%
Solomon(s)	1.7%	Solomon	3.0%	Elizabeth	2.6%
Davis/Davies	1.6%	Morris/Maurice	2.8%	Sophia	2.1%
Myers	1.5%	Moses	2.5%	Jane	2.0%
Wolf	1.4%	Charles	1.7%	Betsy	1.9%
Nathan	1.3%	John	1.6%	Amelia	1.9%
Simmons	1.1%	Michael	1.6%	Mary	1.9%
Lazarus	1.1%	Aaron	1.3%	Julia	1.9%
Barnett	1.1%	Nathan	1.3%	Rose/Rosey	1.9%
Lyons	1.1%
Marks	1.1%
Sub-total	37.2%	Sub-total	50.8%	Sub-total	50.9%

; the majority are of biblical/Hebrew origin, and most of the surnames are patronymic derived (with Cohen and Levy/Levi referring to descent from the priest class or the tribe of Levi, respectively), though some ‘modern’ names popular in the wider community do also feature in the list.

Table 3. Birthplaces of core pre-1882 database individuals.

Birthplace	Proportion
Liverpool	40%
London	9%
Rest of NW England	2%
SW England	1%
English Midlands	1%
Yorkshire and NE England	1%
Rest of British Isles	4%
Poland/Russia	15%
Germany/Prussia	6%
Netherlands	2%
Rest of Europe	1%
The Americas	1%
Rest of World/‘Overseas’	1%
Unknown	15%

summarizes the birthplaces of the core entries. The early establishment of the Jewish community in Liverpool, as mentioned the first to be formed in the north of England (Sapiro 2020b), is reflected in the high proportion of Liverpool-born individuals. Rather than just tabulating the entries with a known birthplace, an unknown birthplace category has been retained, as it is likely that the majority of that sub-group will have been foreign-born, given the sources used in developing the database.

Finally,

Table 4. Corroboration of ‘Jewishness’ of core database individuals.

Found in Jewish Records	Individuals
Individual found	4340
Parents of individual found	650
Mother of individual found	40
Sibling of individual found	470
Children of female individual found	60
Children of male individual found	50
Husband of individual found	20
Wife of individual found	20
Other close relative found	130
No corroboration in Jewish records found	1360
Total core pre-1882 database individuals	7140

shows the extent to which these records have been corroborated through being found in Jewish records. The upper part of the table shows those individuals with a connection that ‘proves’ their ‘Jewishness’. The ‘proof’ may be regarded as a little weaker for the second group, and the final line shows the number of individuals for whom corroboration has not been found—that is, their birth, marriage, or death has not been recorded in the Jewish sources used in this study.5

It is worth noting, however, that half of this residual group were born in Russia/Poland/Germany/Prussia/Netherlands, and one in six has the surname Cohen or Levy. These proportions should be compared with those shown in Table 2 and Table 3 for the whole group and support the conclusion that the strictness of the criteria by which individuals and households were selected from secular records can be expected to have incorrectly excluded rather more genuine Jews than to have inadvertently included persons with no Jewish heritage.

From a genealogical perspective, it has proved possible to link all but 740 of the 7140 core individuals into 1830 families (defined as groups of two or more individuals linked to each other either by marriage or parentage).

Table 5. Extent of connections between individuals and families.

Extent of Connection to Others	Number of Individuals with This Connection
Parent(s) (and siblings), spouse(s) (and children)—FAMC and FAMS numbers allocated	1000
Parent(s) (and siblings)—only FAMC numbers allocated	3060
Spouse(s) (and children)—only FAMS numbers allocated	1970
Connected only to more distant relatives in the same household (e.g., aunt/uncle, nephew/niece, cousin)	130
Visitor in a Jewish household	40
Employee living in a Jewish household	10
Servant living in a Jewish household	10
Lodger in a Jewish household	180
Not connected to anyone	740
Total	7140

summarizes the extent of connections for the individuals in the core database.

The final category (‘not connected to anyone’) consists only of people living alone, or in an institution (e.g., mental asylum, hospital, prison, workhouse); it includes visitors, servants/employees, and lodgers in non-Jewish households.

Of the 1830 family groups, the largest were Henry Barnett and his wife Julia nee Cohen and their 18 children born 1835 to 1860 (20 family members) and David Davieson and his wife Sylvia nee Beck and their 15 children born 1829 to 1854 (17 family members).

The allocation of FAMC and FAMS numbers has allowed the chains of family generations to be linked. Three chains that include five generations, all with a documented connection to Liverpool prior to 1882, have been found. These are as follows:

• Ralph Samuel b1738 m Polly Levy → Henry Samuel b1775 m Flora Yates → Ralph Henry Samuel b1809 m Rosa Samuel → Henry Sylvester Samuel b1842 m Esther Hannah Beddington → Marguerite Kate Samuel b1874
• Simon Joseph b1722 m Zipporah → Abraham Joseph b 1760 m Miriam → Fanny Joseph b1807 m Lewin Mozley → Lewin Barned Mozley b1830 m Rosetta Micholls → Francis Lewin Mozley b1862
• Hannah Samuel b1752 → Moses Samuel b1795 m Harriet Israel → Walter Samuel b1829 m Harriet Wolf → Evelyn Samuel b Beren White → Louisa White b1872

Other family chains where names of five generations are known are included in the database, but the earliest generation remained overseas, with only the second generation onwards appearing in Liverpool records.

All the information gathered is in the form of an Excel spreadsheet. The database has been accepted for unrestricted access by the UK Data Service, https://ukdataservice.ac.uk/, 10 May 2024. In addition, information from the database (or the database itself) can be provided by application to the author. The author is also happy to receive information about corrections and additions to the database.

Contact the author via [email protected].

6. Conclusions

The project has achieved its principal aim of producing a resource that is of use to a wide range of researchers. It allows an important community within the longest-standing non-Christan minority group in the UK to be examined in terms of demographic characteristics, occupations over time, migration to, within, and beyond the Liverpool area, socio-economic advancement, and family history/genealogy. It also demonstrates that it should be possible using an equivalent methodology, to produce similar databases for other religion/ethnicity/heritage-based groups both in the UK and elsewhere, provided characteristics can be found that will allow members of that group to be identified within the wider community, even when membership of that community was not recorded in the original survey or census being examined.