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Thursday, March 14, 2013


In 1900, after years of political campaigning by activists in the East End of London, Thomas Dewar and William Evans-Gordon were elected to Parliament. Their aim was to bring about limits to alien (and especially Jewish) immigration.

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Major William Evans-Gordon
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Major William Evans-Gordon travelled widely in Eastern Europe gathering evidence for his campaign to limit immigration, as shown on this map from the book in which he argued his cause.
* Moving Here catalogue reference (JML) 77.6
In 1903, they helped to persuade Parliament to call a Royal Commission into the effects of alien immigration into Britain. Two years later the first *Aliens Act, limiting immigration into this country, was passed.

Now the majority of East European Jewish migrants arriving at British ports were travelling as *transmigrants to more distant destinations. New York and Cape Town were their destinations, not London, Leeds or Manchester, and the ship owner became legally responsible for preventing alien immigrants from landing illegally at British ports.

Between 1880 and 1914, an estimated one million Jewish *transmigrants arrived at the British ports of Grimsby, Hull, Hartlepool, Leith, London, Newcastle and Southampton. After arrival at an east-coast port of entry, most crossed Britain quickly to the western ports for the next leg of their journey.

At places like Glasgow, Liverpool, London and Southampton, they would board steamships destined for transatlantic ports such as New York, Buenos Aires, and Quebec, or for Cape Town. The burdens associated with mass immigration were now shifted to more distant lands.

Many migrants had relations already settled overseas who were willing to pay for the cost of their journey. Most Jewish immigrants to the US, Canada and South Africa travelled on what were known as pre-paid tickets. Such tickets were relatively cheap - with passage to America falling to just £2 10s (two pounds and ten *shillings) in the early 1900s.

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A page from a passenger manifest for 1909 showing Jewish transmigrants leaving for South Africa
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A page from a passenger manifest for 1909 showing Jewish transmigrants leaving for South Africa (by pre-paid tickets) on board the ships of the Union Castle line. Many of these same individuals can be tracked in the papers of the Wilson Line (on one of whose vessels they arrived in London) and the register of the Poor Jews Temporary Shelter.
* Moving Here catalogue reference (PRO) BT 27/688
The patterns of migration common throughout the 19th- and early 20th-century virtually came to a halt in Britain with the outbreak of the First World War in 1914.

A limited number of Jewish migrants continued to travel to, and through, Britain in the years between the First and Second World Wars, although the United States had by then placed its own severe limitations on immigration, which limited the number of transmigrants arriving in Britain. With the rise of the *nazis in Germany in the 1930s, many Jewish refugees sought entry to Britain, but only some 50,000 arrived. After the foundation of the state of Israel in 1948, many East European Jews sought refuge there. By this time, mass Jewish immigration to Britain had all but ceased.

For the first-generation arrivals in Britain, *naturalisation was a means to settling permanently and acquiring citizenship in their adopted home. They and their children (born British citizens) are a good example of the ability of an immigrant group to integrate with their host community whilst retaining a unique cultural and religious identity.

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