Percy Galkoff: A Liverpool Kosher Butcher

The Origins of Liverpool’s Jewish Heritage

To appreciate the reason why Galkoff`s kosher butcher’s shop is situated in Pembroke Place, an area of Liverpool that today displays very few signs of a Jewish community, it is necessary to review the city’s Jewish heritage links within the London Road and Islington areas of the city. Playing a major part in the history of Anglo-Jewry it was almost certainly the first Jewish community in the north of England.

The arrival of Jews in Liverpool can be dated from the early 1700s although the majority of Jews arrived in the city around 1900 on route to the Americas escaping persecution and the Pogroms that where taking place in Russia and Poland. The first Jewish settlers were German immigrant hawkers who settled in the area around the old Custom House near to Liverpool’s first dock. The exact date of their arrival is uncertain. They became fully established in the town by 1756 as the first Synagogue was situated in a house in Cumberland Street before the 1750s.

In 1775 a larger Synagogue was set up in Turton Court, near the Custom House and in 1789 another was opened at 133 Upper Frederick Street. By 1807 Henry Samuel laid the foundation stone of the first purpose-built Jewish place of worship in Seel Street. It was designed by a local architect Thomas Harrison of Chester and was fronted with an elegant facade of Ionic columns. Following its consecration it became the first synagogue outside London in which sermons were delivered in English. The Seel Street Synagogue became a symbol of the Jewish community’s growing acceptance in Liverpool.

The acquiescence of Jews in Liverpool and the lack of anti-Semitism in the town were noted by the Methodist preacher John Wesley in his diaries. He commented on how well the townspeople of Liverpool get on with the Jewish community. Well before they were allowed to stand for Parliament or as municipal officers, Jews in Liverpool were accepted as members of the Athenaeum, an institution they helped to found in 1797, an indication of the town’s cosmopolitan tolerance. The foundation of the Liverpool Hebrew Philanthropic Society by Moses Samuel in 1811 provided a pioneering model of Jewish charitable and educational institutions elsewhere in the United Kingdom.

As Liverpool expanded physically and economically during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Jewish immigrants were attracted to the town, mainly from Germany and Holland. The population increased from approximately 100 in 1789 to over 400 in 1810 and nearly 1,000 by 1825. Between 1875 and 1914 an estimated 120,000 Eastern European Jews settled in Britain, a Five fold increase in the Anglo-Jewish community and shifting the centre of the provincial Jewish population to the industrial and commercial centres of the North West, the North East, the Midlands, Scotland and South Wales. Most of the newcomers were shopkeepers dealing in jewellery and clothing, but a few developed an interest in banking and trade.