The Strand Magazine, Vol. 27, Issue 160, April, 1904Various
General
The Strand Magazine, Vol. 27, Issue 160, April, 1904
Various
English literature -- Periodicals; Short stories, English -- Periodicals
The younger women are well dressed, with a tendency to brilliant colours
and the "Paris fashion" that is displayed in the gay millinery shops of the
Ghetto. The children, who have been running in and out of the crowd, are
neat and clean, their pinafores are white, their boots are good and
well-fitting, their hair is bound with bright ribbons, and their frocks are
pretty. The first thought of the poorest alien immigrant is for his
children, and his pride is to see them well clad and well cared for.
The middle-aged women and the old women are true daughters of the East.
They wear coloured shawls over their heads. There is a curious monotony in
the coiffure of the women of the Ghetto who have passed their first youth.
The woman of thirty and the woman of seventy seem equally well supplied
with a head of glossy black hair. The stranger wonders, as he looks into an
old, wrinkled face, at the abundance of black hair surmounting it. If he
asks the reason he will learn that many of the Russian Jewesses cut their
own hair off on the day of their marriage and wear a wig for the rest of
their lives. To the Oriental the glory of a woman is her hair. The Jewish
bride was expected to sacrifice this attraction in order that she should
not entice the eyes of men.
[Illustration: "A CLOTHES AUCTION IN FULL SWING."]
It is a custom of long ago and the Russian Jewesses adhere to it. Most of
the older women came into the Ghetto straight from the ship that landed
them in the Thames, and they rarely go beyond its boundaries. Many of them
would not if they had the chance.
Here is a clothes auction in full swing. The sombre shop, the front window
of which is pushed half-way up, is packed with ready-made suits. The
proprietor is selling them to an eager crowd of men, who, when their bid is
accepted, take trousers, coats, and waistcoats over their arm and walk away
with their purchase. There is a tailor's shop close at hand where twenty
cutters and a large number of hands are employed in preparing suits solely
for the Sunday sale in this street.
Within a stone's throw of this street is a great Sunday gold and diamond
market. During the morning and early afternoon you may see a number of men
with little wash-leather bags or velvet-lined cases displaying their
glittering merchandise to one another. The jewel mart and exchange is in
progress. Many hundreds of pounds' worth of jewels change hands within a
few minutes. In Wentworth Street the buyer will haggle and bargain for half
an hour over a few pence. In St. James's Place a transaction involving
hundreds of pounds is carried out in a minute with scarcely a superfluous
word. The business is conducted with perfect good-humour, but the dealers
are among the keenest and cleverest men in the City of London.
But we are still only half off the track, for now and again the Gentile
sightseer penetrates as far as this.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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