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Trains and Shelters and Ships

© Aubrey Newman

Paper presented at a seminar under the auspices of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Great Britain, April 2000

I must express my gratitude to a number of persons who have facilitated this paper, including nearly two hundred undergraduates, but in particular to my research associate, Mr Nicholas Evans, who has given me some new insights on particular parts of migration studies.

From the early decades of the nineteenth century there was a constant stream of movement from Europe, originally from Germany but also from many other countries.  There is for example an important Institute set up to study migration from Finland, while other streams emanated from Scandinavia as well as, increasingly, from Eastern Europe and the Balkans.  We are aware for example also of the importance of the Mormon records, but one of the significant streams of migrants was indeed of Mormons heading to the States.  However, so long as we are aware of the importance of this non-Jewish stream of migration, it would make some sense to concentrate on the Jewish migrants.  I want also to point to the initial importance of the fact that at the beginning of the process much of this migration went through Great Britain, since Britain was the home of the most important transatlantic shipping companies.

The starting point must be the individual in his original place of residence.  What would be the principal reason for migration?  Many would point to pogroms and persecution.  Nonetheless all the evidence is that in Lithuania and its immediate neighbourhood there were no Cossack attacks and no pogroms as we would understand them. There is instead clear evidence of a steady stream of migration through Britain from Poland throughout the period 1850 to 1914.  Many of these, immigrants and transmigrants, were Jews, and in the mid-1850s between 500 and a thousand Jews a year arrived via Hull alone.  Poverty, disease and epidemics, the desire to go to a better place - all these are very important, and linked with those ‘push’ factors are a large number of ‘pull’ factors.  Not least of them are those linked with promotional activities of locally based shipping agents and representatives.  From at least the 1860s whole networks of local agents operated from most of the villages of central and northern Europe. These agents worked under the auspices of regional agents who had direct links with shipping companies such as Cunard, Allan, White Star, and the Wilsons.  Undoubtedly as conditions worsened in the Pale migrants from Kovno developed links to agents in their villages just as there were in provincial Norway. Certainly from l902 onwards the traffic of Russian Jews, like that of cattle, general cargo and iron ore, were carved up between the shipping magnates who dominated the Baltic trade. The Det Forende Dampskibs Selskab of Copenhagen, Thomas Wilson and Sons of Hull, and Det Dansk Russisk Dampskibs of Copenhagen agreed to maintain regular services in the Baltic, carefully splitting the traffic between them. Between them these companies that competed for traffic out of Russia dominated the movement of migrants from the Pale to the Cape or Ellis Island. Once in England this cargo was then handed over to the transatlantic lines who would take this easily made revenue to their final destination whether it was Canada. America or South Africa.  In the period 1850 till 1880 Hamburg dominated as the main port of Jewish migration out of Europe (most of its passengers travelling through Great Britain) but as the numbers leaving Europe soared other ports such as Bremen, Copenhagen, Antwerp, and Rotterdam began to secure an increasing share in this port, acting as ports where additional freight of human cargo could be picked up.

A great deal of light is thrown by the records of the Poor Jews’ Temporary Shelter upon much of these activities, as is done also by much contemporary anecdotage.  Most of these agents were undoubtedly honest, but there were a number of rogues amongst them.  Many entries in the Shelter’s records illustrate individuals coming to the Shelter, proceeding to various addresses in London, and then noted as going on to America ‘per Stern’ or per ‘Kahn’ as agents.  Often the registers note individuals buying their tickets in their place of origin and sometimes they add how much money had been paid for the tickets.  There was one very celebrated case noted in the Minutes of the Shelter committees where five individuals had paid for their tickets in Bialystock, had come to London to collect them, only to find that the London agent claimed to know nothing about the case.  The five, with the support of the Shelter authorities had gone to the Thames Justices of the Peace, but the magistrates had been unable to help.  All that could be done was to give the luckless five their return fares to Russia and also to give them letters from the Chief Rabbi and others in London so that they could publicise the proceedings in newspapers in Russia and thus try and prevent others from being swindled.  There are however many anecdotes of persons in Russia being sold tickets that they thought would take them to America only to find that they were good only as far as London or some other port in the United Kingdom. Often prepaid passage tickets had been sent from America, London, or South Africa.  There was a series of ‘Immigrant Banks’ whose services were called upon for this purpose.  One print of a ‘Ghetto Bank’ in London displays posters on the wall advertising the Cunard, Allan, and Union Shipping companies. The overjoyed recipients of such tickets made feverish preparations to leave.

For all the first stage in the journey was the move from their homes to the port from which the migrant was shipped to his ultimate destination - be it North America, South America, South Africa or elsewhere.  It was rare to have ships travelling directly across the Atlantic from Baltic ports, though for a short while there were direct sailings from Libau or Riga to North America.  The so-called Volunteer Fleet did sail from there, but this was not the most common means of leaving Russia.  Direct shipping from Russia to the United States was infrequent, inconvenient, and often uncomfortable. The route from Libau was for a time suspended after 1907, and the Finnish port of Hangoe took its place.  A committee to look after migrants was established in the nearby city of Helsinki. But after 1909 Hangoe and the Latvian city of Riga lost their importance and Libau again became the chief port of embarkation. In 1909, 14,960 Jews sailed from Libau; in 1910, 18,815; and in 1911,17,000.  The other passenger route from Russia, that from Odessa to New York, was not at all popular, even for those coming from southern Russia, and in any case it took a much longer time than the journey by way of the Baltic ports.

Where passengers left from Riga or Libau they travelled either to Hamburg or, more usually, to Great Britain. The ships used for the journey to Great Britain were not necessarily luxurious, or even necessarily built for the passenger trade.  There are accounts of the use of cattle boats or even timber boats for this purpose, often carrying the normal commercial traffic as well as passengers.  The conditions, especially on the cattle boats, are not comfortable reading, especially if one bears in mind that the cattle were the primary concern of their captains and that cattle need constant mucking-out, usually by water pumped over the cattle decks and often percolating over the passengers in the cramped holds below.  Even where the ships were supposedly built exclusively for passengers the conditions aboard were far from satisfactory, and my research associate has discovered reports from the Hull port sanitary authorities which describe human excrement flowing down the outsides of these ships.  A number of shipping companies catered for migrants coming either directly from the Baltic or on the shorter run from Hamburg or Bremen. 

Even when the passengers had left Europe on the transatlantic boats conditions were far from ideal, and there are many accounts of how bad steerage conditions could be. However it must be said that the passengers were not beyond reproach, and there was a report of notices on the walls of the steerage cabin on one ship stating that ‘All couples making love too warmly would be married compulsorily at New York if the authorities deemed it fit, or should be fined, or imprisoned.’

One of the further problems of the sea route was that the Russian authorities could control the flow of sea passengers, and could create financial hurdles through the issue of passports.  These were not required to enter the countries of Western Europe or America but in order to leave Russia.  There are accounts of how the Russian authorities would delay each stage of issuing these documents, at each stage levying an additional fee.  Alternatively there are accounts of how the various agents would exploit both the Russian authorities and the migrants themselves:

It became a common practice to put a number of persons of different families on a single passport. In many cases the shipping agent pocketed the difference after charging each individual for the passport. I recall the case of six young men and women who were manifested as brothers and sisters. They looked so utterly unlike one another that our suspicions were aroused. They were all a bright group, and readily admitted that the agent had insisted on listing them as one family

The alternative to travelling by ship all the way was to use the land route through Hamburg or Bremen or through Amsterdam or Rotterdam. Many travelling by land started by having themselves smuggled across the frontier. In many cases even those who were legally entitled to leave the country almost by habit had themselves smuggled across by a local agent or even smuggler who appeared in the village

in some disguise', often that of a moujhik who said he was going to the town on the German side to sell some goods, carried for the purpose of ensuring the success of the ruse. When several such tricks had been played on the guards, it became very risky, and often, when caught, a traveller resorted to stratagem, which is very diverting when afterwards described, but not so at a time when much depends on its success. Sometimes a paltry bribe secured one a safe passage, and often emigrants were aided by men who made it their profession to help them cross.

Intending migrants from Guberniya in the south of Russia often went through Austria-Hungary, the town of Brody being one very important crossing point.  One factor in the choice of these crossing points was the difference in railway gauge between the broad Russian gauge and the standard Central European one.  Crossing often involved the leaving of trains on one side of the border and re-embarkation on the other.  The difficulties of such movement from south Eastern Europe might perhaps also be illustrated by reference to the füss-gayers, the migrants from Rumania who walked in 1900 from Rumania to the North Sea coastline.  Those who came from the northern Pale would usually arrive at the frontier posts set up by the German government to control the flow of migrants.  At first many of the new arrivals had not been properly processed by the German authorities until they had arrived at the Charlottenberg or Ruhleben railways stations in Berlin.  But as a result of the arrival of large numbers of Russian Jews there was set up in May 1891 the German Central Committee for the Russian Jews. Although Hamburg had originally been not only the chief port of embarkation but also the main processing centre this soon became impracticable. Instead the German - more accurately the Prussian - government set up a chain of control stations, some sixty in all.  At Koenigsberg there was situated the Chief Border Committee with the responsibility for sifting immigrants lodging them, clothing them and looking after those who were rejected for onward movement.  Elsewhere there were subordinate committees at others of the northern crossing points. In Upper Silesia there was another group of controls administered through a committee at Beuthen which was also responsible for those coming Austrian border agencies. Refugees going through Koenigsberg were provided with direct tickets for America by way of Stettin, Hamburg and Bremen.  Others were routed to Hamburg for examination.  So far as the German government was concerned this process had a further important aim,  the provision of passengers for the Hamburg-Amerika Line.  Those migrants who did not already have tickets for America but who were intending to travel there had the choice of either buying them there and then or being refused admission.  Those who claimed, rightly or wrongly, that they were proceeding to Great Britain were subjected to very close questioning, while those who intended to settle elsewhere in western Europe were often refused all help.  There were comments on the way that many travellers were treated:

The treatment of Russian emigrants by the Prussian authorities or the eastern border during the past weeks has been a matter of lively comment in the daily press.    The real facts are the following: the German shipping companies and those associated with them have been for some time in sharp competition with the British Cunard Line. Upon the order of the Prussian government, the German shipping companies built barracks ...  in which to examine the health of the emigrants. ... The use of these barracks is permitted only to those travellers who have booked with German companies. Under the circumstances, Jewish emigrants coming from Russia, Galicia and Rumania, but not possessing German steamship tickets, are urgently asked to bear in mind the acute difficulties facing them at the German border.

Many had to stay for varying lengths of time in the control stations set up at the frontiers by the two leading German shipping lines, the Hamburg-American and the Norddeutscher Lloyd. These centres were erected by the shipping firms with the consent of the German authorities to safeguard Germany's maritime interests; but to the outside world they functioned as quarantine stations.  Even when they had arrived at these control stations their tribulations were not an end, for even when many of them arrived at the German border with prepaid passages purchased by their relatives in Canada and the United States the authorities and shipping companies often refused to acknowledge these payments or found some error in them. Sometimes fraudulent agents in America had swindled their clients by handing them worthless scraps or paper instead of valid tickets. The unfortunate refugees then had to return to Russia. Others arrived at the frontier with valid steamship tickets but for such lines as the Cunard, which were not licensed by the German authorities.  They were likewise forbidden to continue their journey. Sometimes, local Jewish committees neglected to inform such ticket owners that they would be turned back at the border and it was only after  protracted negotiations between the Berlin Central Emigration Office and the shipping companies that the invalid tickets were exchanged for valid ones. During this interval, the travellers suffered extremely unpleasant personal experiences.

One observer commented:

People were fleeced by being forced, sometimes, to twist their intended route, for the benefit of competing steamship lines.  At these control stations, where it was necessary to bathe and have the clothes disinfected, a simple fleecing device of the agents was to tell the people as they passed m their clothing for fumigation - while they went from the outer to the inner room wrapped in a sheet - to take their money in their hands as the intense heat during fumigation might destroy the bills. Thus they came to know to what extent they could bleed the immigrant.

At Hamburg the shipping companies had established enormous receiving areas. As early as 1855 the Hamburg City Council had established a Board of Emigration to try and control the transit of passengers, as against the activities of the so-called ‘Litzers’ who worked for the clerks of the shipping companies, for the landlords, the keepers of the stores who sold the migrants useful (and useless) utensils, and the moneychangers.  When in 1881 and 1882 there was a sudden flow of Jews out of southern Russia through Brody the Jews of Hamburg, in company with many other Jewish communities, took action to assist those coming through; they founded a relief organisation which took care of the migrants from their arrival at the railway station to the departure of their ships.  Another organisation was set up to deal with the migrants coming from Austro-Hungary or Rumania.  By 1890 there were in Hamburg 40 lodging houses registered with a total of 1200 beds.  From the time they crossed the German border to the point of embarkation German Jewish Associations, controlled and mobilised from Berlin, thus ensured that the migrants were not just passed from one Jewish welfare organisation to the next as often they were in England.  That meant of course also that there was no danger that any of them would decide to stay in Germany.

In 1891 the State Authorities made a big shed available for migrants, and in addition the Hamburg Amerika Line was ordered to provide further accommodation.  The city provided a site on the ‘America quay’ on which there were erected eight sheds, with room for 1400 persons. The migrants paid one mark a day for accommodation and food.  Trains were directed straight to the sheds and those in possession of steerage tickets were not allowed to leave the train before the camp was reached.  There they were medically examined and their clothing was disinfected.  Some ten years later, in 1900, the Hamburg Amerika Line built a new camp nearby, with many more but smaller buildings; each with dormitories for up to 40 persons and with bathroom, toilets, and a living room.  The area was divided into three areas, A for unclean, B for clean, and C which was an isolation ward.  Food was prepared on the site, and we have for example, a bill of fare for one day in 1907: In the morning tea or coffee with sugar and milk and white bread; at noon soup with meat and vegetables; and in the evening tea or coffee with sugar and milk and white bread. The price for board and lodging was 2 marks a day. From Hamburg many migrants travelled direct to America, and this was one of the major sources of revenue for the German North Atlantic liners. 

Many however travelled indirectly through Britain, as did many other would-be migrants from Bremen, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Antwerp.  There were a number of ships that catered for the migrant traffic;  at one stage the report of a House of Commons committee, commenting on the arrivals in London, stated:

The alien traffic to London is mainly carried on by four steamship lines, viz.: the ‘Batavier’ line from Rotterdam, the ‘Argo’ line from Bremen, the United Shipping Company from Libau and other Russian ports, and the ‘Kirsten’ line from Hamburg.  A steamer of the Batavier line arrives at Gravesend every day, except Monday, at about 6 am, and discharges at Customs House Quay. The ‘Argo’ line has three boats a week, arriving at Gravesend at varying times and discharging at St Katherine’s Dock.  The ‘Kirsten’ Line has two boats a week, arriving on Monday nights and Friday nights and discharging at St Katherine’s Dock; and the United Shipping company has one or two boats a week arriving on Mondays or Tuesdays at varying times and discharging at Hay’s Wharf (south side) or at Millwall Docks.  Besides these there are also boats from different ports at irregular intervals for the Albert and West India Docks, the Surrey Commercial Docks, and Tilbury Dock

In addition several other ports were major ports of entry into Great Britain, mainly Hull and Grimsby, although ports such as West Hartlepool, Leith, or Newcastle also saw such traffic.  In Hull it was mainly the Wilson Line to Scandinavia and the Baltic which either on its own account or in conjunction with DFDS landed most of the migrants;  in Grimsby the shipping company was largely under the control of the railway company, the Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire Railway (later the Great Central Railway) transporting the migrants to Liverpool.  Incidentally, It has always amused and even amazed me to hear or to read accounts of migrants arriving by boat from Europe to Liverpool, and then proceeding on to America.  The only occasion when migrants did arrive at Liverpool by water was in the early days of railways when it was cheaper and more comfortable to travel from Hull to Liverpool by canal boat.  In moving people from Eastern Europe to the west it was obviously quicker and cheaper to take the migrants by as short a sea voyage as practicable and then herd them over-land to Liverpool.

In 1882 there was a massive influx of refugees coming through Great Britain as part of the clearance of the Brody refugees.  The Liverpool Commission, operating on behalf of the [London] Mansion House Relief Fund, was established for a short period of time in 1882 and its Report is a very full account of how these travellers were dealt with at a local level:

As early as last October, 1881, many refugees passed through Liverpool en route for America, and their wants were attended to here by the local branch of the Anglo-Jewish Association.  In the spring of this year, however, the relief of the Jews in Russia was undertaken on a large scale by the London Mansion House Committee  ...  and a Commission of honorary officers was appointed in Liverpool  ...  to them was entrusted the reception and destination to Canada and America of the many thousand refugees sent to Liverpool by the Lemberg Commissioners.

To receive the refugees arriving via Hamburg, Grimsby, and West Hartlepool to Liverpool;  to board and lodge them whilst in Liverpool; to destinate [sic] to such localities best suited to their individual trade and capacity; to provide them with drafts payable at destination  ...  and to attend to the religious supervision connected with the food in Liverpool and on the steamships, was the charge entrusted to the Liverpool Commission.

Owing to the crowded state of the emigration of Germans and Scandinavians to America great difficulty was at first experienced in securing lodgings in Liverpool for the refugees,  but this difficulty was successfully overcome.  The same remark also applies to the Steamship Companies, whose contracts for the carrying of continental passengers were of such dimensions, owing to the great stream of general emigration, that the Liverpool Commission had the greatest difficulty to secure room for the Jewish refugees.

The premises that were used could provide for 400 persons under cover, and the refugees came in bands of 200. The Commission provided for security of the luggage, the provision of tickets and money for the journey and subsequent activities in America.  The Commission was also able to secure very favourable rates on the ships and the North American railway lines.  The original fare was £4, afterwards reduced to £3. 10s, and then to £3 and eventually £2. 15s.  Provision was also made to ensure that the travellers were not left on their own on arrival in America.  ‘Our refugees were met at the landing station and at once despatched to their final destination’. Between 27 April 1882 and 12 July over 6,000 refugees were dealt with, travelling on 31 ships in all.  The total cost was just over £30,000 of which the bulk went on fares and less than a thousand on general administration.

Needless to say after the initial intense competition between the railway companies between Hull / Grimsby for the traffic to the west the trade was fixed between them and there was a sharing of traffic.  A memoir by a railway superintendent reports under the year 1871:

the large flow  of emigrant traffic from Scandinavia and Central Europe, to the States , by way of Hull ... reached very large proportions, and for many years was regularly divided between the respective routes from Hull and New Holland to Liverpool, by minuted arrangement (supplemental to the Humber Conference); so heavy was the traffic that the Lancashire and Yorkshire and the London and North-Western had to provide special storage rooms for emigrants’ luggage at their respective stations at Liverpool, to meet this occasional glut of traffic. Interpreters had to accompany the trains, as English was quite unknown to this class of traveller.  The fares, at one time, from Hull to Liverpool were very good;  but gradually owing to long sea competition, this cross-England traffic could only be retained by still reduced charges, and when divided between the Cheshire Lines new route, the Lancashire and Yorkshire, and the London and North-Western, the traffic became almost valueless.

A little later, in the same volume of Memoirs, under the year 1890, the author wrote about the secretary of the ‘Joint Conference’ which dealt with the conveyance of the Norwegian and Baltic emigration parties to America, using the port of Hull:

His duty, carried out with perfect impartiality, being to allot as equally as possible the shipment of these emigrants arriving in the Humber by the various routes available across to Liverpool. At one time the flow of this emigrant traffic from the north of Europe to Hull, thence cross England to Liverpool, and so to the United States, was very large, and the Lancashire and Yorkshire Company had extensive barrack waiting rooms at Tithebarn Street Station for the accommodation of the emigrants who came over in the through trains from Hull;  but latterly the establishment of steamers making the voyage throughout from Scandinavia to the American ports, has consequently reduced this flow of traffic.

In 1894 he again reported that the rivalry of Southampton with Liverpool for the American traffic had been developing during the year.  Whereas earlier the main task of the Railway Companies’ agent had been so to arrange the traffic as to distribute the passengers according to the agreed proportions.  Later there were transhipments from Hull or Grimsby to Southampton, so that Liverpool had to struggle for its share of the trade.

Unexpectedly the news came that one of these boatloads was destined no longer from Hull to Liverpool but for the Inman steamers to Southampton;  and Mr Davis [the agent] found himself requisitioned to arrange their transit from Hull by railway through London and then to Southampton - services and routes not contemplated by the old Humber arrangement, and in direct competition with the majority of companies working in friendly alliance over the routes to Liverpool

As part of their reaction and in order to maintain the port’s share of the Atlantic traffic the authorities at Liverpool had to remove the ‘bar’ at the mouth of the Mersey and the railway companies  had to establish a line which would allow the passenger trains to cross the city and use as their terminus a station at the pierhead, alongside the landing stage.

It is interesting however that once the full flow of Jews out of Russia began in real earnest the railway companies were once again extremely active, and my research associate is at present establishing the various methods by which the companies secured a strong, almost stranglehold on the cross-country traffic to Liverpool.  The flow of the traffic through Hull was of almost staggering proportions.  In 1896 nearly 20,000 passengers passed through en route for Liverpool, London, Glasgow, or Southampton, and although there were temporary blips in 1897 and 1898 the figures grew steadily until they reached a peak of nearly 70,000 in 1903.  There were further blips in the next few years but in 1907 nearly 80,000 arrived in Hull.

Aliens leaving Great Britain, 1896 -1910

Emigrants transported from Hull by the North eastern Railway

© Nicholas Evans  Details provided by N Evans and based upon his research