From Russia with love

A story from Louis Teeman about his father illustrating how Jewish immigrants ended up in Leeds:

"My father left his town, Mariempol, Russia (now in Lithuania, the birthplace of most of the Jews who came to Leeds), to escape conscription. They were taking boys aged 15 and16 - he was reaching that age and they had to get him away - for the period of army service was as long as 25 years. He and many others crossed the frontier into Prussia at night and made their way to Hamburg. They took the boat to England. The journey was several days - they slept on deck in all sorts of terrible weather as they didn't have the money to go below - and eventually they reached Hull. At Hull, they were assembled and interrogated.

He went on to Leeds, he had been told to as there were Jewish slipper makers there and he might find a job - Leeds was the only word of English he knew. If he found a job then he would make enough money to end for his parents. When the train drew into Leeds, the porters shouted 'Leeds, Leeds!' and of course the doors were thrown open, and the passengers' bundles of belongings were seized by a man with a handcart. His name was Jimmy Gilmour and he was a fighting Irishman who when drunk used to fight lamp posts with his bare fists. He would pile all these bundles on the hand cart and take them along Boar Lane to point out the sights. Jimmy was very proud of his knowledge of Yiddish which he'd picked up in the Leylands. It was a Sunday and the churchgoers would eye this group of men following a handcart, dressed in Russian peaked caps, long thigh boots and long overcoats to their ankles, very bedraggled after the journey.

All of them were unhappy, miserable, homesick; they would reach Kirkgate and pass the open market and then they were in the Leylands. At last they recognized something - the smells of fried fish, chicken feathers burning - and Jimmy Gilmour would shout out loud in Yiddish 'mir zanen do' (we are here)! And the doors and windows would fly open, men, women and children would rush out and scan the faces to see if they recognized relatives and friends. My father got a job as a slipper maker, which was his trade. They couldn't find him accommodation so, like many others, he slept under his bench, beneath the treadle machines. People typically lived in tiny houses, many of the rooms were no more than 12 or 14 feet square. They crowded in as many people as possible. They not only let out rooms, they let corners of rooms and in some rooms there were four couples each with a blanket spread over the corner".