Great Britain -- Emigration and immigration; Noncitizens -- Great Britain
Leeds is a place which calls for more than a mere passing notice,
since it is probably more directly interested in the question of alien
immigration than any other provincial town in England. The incoming
tide flows on unchecked, and helps to swell the poorer population
of Leeds to an alarming extent. In a Report of the Sweating System
at Leeds, Mr. Burnett, Labour Correspondent to the Board of Trade,
wrote:--"As elsewhere these people (the Jews) may be almost said to
form a foreign colony in the heart of an English town, and Leeds
has now its Jewish quarter just as the East End of London has. They
have settled down in a district called the Leylands, and they have
taken such complete possession of it, that in the Board School of the
locality, 75 per cent. of the children are Jews. The streets in the
Leylands are beginning to assume distinctly foreign characteristics.
The names above the shops are foreign, and the notices in the windows
are printed in Hebrew characters. The words spoken are unintelligible
to English ears, and about the race of the children in the streets and
the people at the doors there can be no mistake."
More recent evidence is afforded by the _Yorkshire Post_ "The great
majority of the arrivals," writes this journal,[6] "are Russian and
Polish Jews, who on landing upon English soil, at once move to the
centre of the clothing industry, most of them with little or no money
in their pockets, many of them without a trade in their hands, and not
a few of them trusting for safe dealings to their English vocabulary,
which is limited to one word, 'Leeds.' ... It is quite evident that
there has been an increase during the present year. The persecution of
the Semitic race in Russia has driven immense numbers to seek in this
country the hospitable shelter that is denied them in the land of their
birth, and a not inconsiderable proportion of them having heard of
Leeds as an earthly Paradise for outcasts and wanderers, direct their
steps towards the West Riding capital immediately the Hamburg boat
lands them at Hull."
Among the evidences of the greater influx into the Jewish colony of
Leeds is the increased number of applications for help that are being
received almost every week by the Jewish Board of Guardians, and by
those who have the control of the relief funds connected with the
various Hebrew congregations of the town.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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