Poor Jews' Temporary Shelter Database, 1896-1914

UKDA study number:6012

Principal Investigators

Smith, J.G.
Newman, A.N.
University of Leicester. School of Historical Studies

Data Collectors

Smith, J.G.
Newman, A.N.

Sponsor

University of Cape Town. Isaac and Jessie Kaplan Centre for Jewish Studies and Research

Distributed by

UK Data Archive, University of Essex, Colchester.

September 2008 (2nd Edition)

Bibliographic Citation

All works which use or refer to these materials should acknowledge these sources by means of bibliographic citation. To ensure that such source attributions are captured for bibliographic indexes, citations must appear in footnotes or in the reference section of publications. The bibliographic citation for this data collection is:

Smith, J.G. and Newman, A.N., Poor Jews' Temporary Shelter Database, 1896-1914 [computer file]. 2nd Edition. Colchester, Essex: UK Data Archive [distributor], September 2008. SN: 6012, http://dx.doi.org/10.5255/UKDA-SN-6012-1

Acknowledgement

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Any publication, whether printed, electronic or broadcast, based wholly or in part on these materials should carry a statement that the original data creators, depositors or copyright holders, the funders of the Data Collections (if different) and the UK Data Archive bear no responsibility for their further analysis or interpretation.

Copyright:
Joint owners of the copyright database: Aubrey N. Newman and John Graham Smith, School of Historical Studies, University of Leicester

Owner of copyright in the original manuscript registers from which the database is derived: Jews' Temporary Shelter, 1-2 Endsleigh Street, London, WC1H 0DS

Disclaimer

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6012 . Poor Jews' Temporary Shelter Database, 1896-1914

Depositor:

Smith, J.G. , University of Leicester. School of Historical Studies

Principal Investigators:

Smith, J.G. , University of Leicester. School of Historical Studies

Newman, A.N. , University of Leicester. School of Historical Studies

Data Collectors:

Smith, J.G.
Newman, A.N.

Sponsor:

University of Cape Town. Isaac and Jessie Kaplan Centre for Jewish Studies and Research

Other Acknowledgements:

Inan, Cenka (Computing assistant on original pilot project)
Barker, Caroline (Principal data inputter)
Olds, Karen (Principal data inputter)

Abstract:

The database was developed in the first instance as a resource for undergraduate teaching and subsequently for historical and genealogical research. The teaching aspect was in the context of the pioneering Computing for Historians programme developed at Leicester between 1988 and 2002. This required all history students to undertake database work as a core element in their degree, involving an assigned quota of data input into one of a range of departmental databases and culminating in a finals project on their designated database. From a research point of view, work on the Shelter database received an important stimulus with the discovery that a substantial proportion of the migrants recorded in the database were bound for South Africa. This discovery attracted funding from the Kaplan Centre at the University of Cape Town, to help speed up the input by employing three postgraduates, and it led to the mounting of a partial online version of the database in Cape Town as part of a project there to research the development of South Africa’s early Jewish community at the beginning of the twentieth century. The database has subsequently been drawn on by two postgraduate theses and a number of publications.

Main Topics:

Between 1886 and the outbreak of war in 1914, the Poor Jews’ Temporary Shelter in London provided a transitory refuge for tens of thousands of migrants arriving from Eastern Europe in search of a better life in the West. The database contains a transcription of the personal and travel details of these migrants as recorded in the Shelter’s surviving registers for the period 1896 to 1914, amounting to almost 60,000 records. Besides their name, age, place of birth, occupation, marital status, and number of children (but unfortunately not for the most part their sex), the records also indicate the migrant’s date of arrival and usually of departure, the amount of money they had with them, the place they were last from and sometimes the ship on which they arrived, and a London address at which they were staying or a destination for which they were bound elsewhere. For migrants travelling on to other countries, the ship on which they left is often given, particularly for those bound for South Africa, where the database makes clear the Shelter’s important links with the Union and Castle shipping lines. There are also sometimes miscellaneous notes recording individual circumstances, such as a relative to whom the migrant was going. Derived columns have been added to the database to help identify migrants travelling together in family groups, and to link records in cases where a migrant’s arrival was entered in both a main and a supplementary register.

Coverage:

Time Period Covered: 29 May 1886 - 09 July 1914 Gaps: 01/11/1903-13/08/1904, 24/06/1905-28/11/1907, 28/11/1911-30/07/1913
Dates of Fieldwork: 1987 - 2008
Country: Argentina; Austria-Hungary; Austria; Belarus; Canada; England; Germany (pre-1948); Great Britain; Hungary; Latvia; Lithuania; Moldova; Poland; Romania; Russia; South Africa; Ukraine; United States
Geography: Amsterdam; Antwerp; Bremen; Hamburg; Hull; Libau; London; Rotterdam; Grimsby; Jewish Pale of Settlement; Kovno (Region); Grodno; Minsk (Region); Vilna (Region); Kiev (Region); Podolia; Volhynia; Bessarabia; Courland; Vitebsk (Region); Mogilev; Kherson; Chernigov; Ekaterinoslav (Region); Poltava
Spatial Units: London Boroughs (Including City of London)
Observation Units: Individuals; Families/households
Kind of Data: Textual data; Numeric data; Alpha/numeric data

Universe Sampled:

Location of Units of Observation: Cross-national; National; Subnational
Population: Jewish emigrants from Eastern Europe staying temporarily in London before migrating to other countries 1886-1914

Methodology:

Time Dimensions: Cross-sectional (one-time) study
Sampling Procedures: No sampling (total universe)
Method of Data Collection: Transcription of existing materials
Data Sources: Manuscript registers of inmates of Poor Jews' Temporary Shelter, 1896-1914, 18 vols. (London Metropolitan Archives, LMA/4184)
Weighting: no weighting conducted

Language(s) of Written Materials:

Study Description: English
Study Documentation: English

Access:

Access Conditions: The depositor has specified that registration is required and standard conditions of use apply. The depositor may be informed about usage. See terms and conditions for further information.
Availability: History Data Service, UK Data Archive
Contact: Help desk: hds@essex.ac.uk

Date of First Release:

29 September 2008

Date of Latest Release:

30 September 2008 ( 2nd Edition )

Copyright:

Joint owners of the copyright database: Aubrey N. Newman and John Graham Smith, School of Historical Studies, University of Leicester

Owner of copyright in the original manuscript registers from which the database is derived: Jews' Temporary Shelter, 1-2 Endsleigh Street, London, WC1H 0DS

File last updated:

24 April 2012