Delaware inquirer. (Wilmington, Del.) 1859-18??, 1859-11-05
A Walk Among the East of Lon
don Jews.

nuUtlcle Instruments, inc MASSES OF reuuN -nluue
clothes for the hurried emigrant, the libraries
of books of colonial interest, the plates of In
iamcn in hurricanes off the Cape, and ofapo-
rryphal naval battles, whcrewith most of the
shop windows in that most maritime of the
city thoroughfarcs are stocked and at length,
tired of what we saw, turned down st. Mary
Axe into the great Jewish colony of London.
1t is not a savory locality the city Ghetto
Picturesqueness and dirt, however, frequently
go together, and here assurcdly were both
For hundreds of years, the labyrinth of small,
crooked streets, blind lanes, and tortuons pas
sages, ending in tiresome eul de sdcs, which
stretches away north of Lcadenhall street, has
been inhabited, as it is inhabited now, by Jews.
The ancestors of the bearded men you meet
lived and died in those quaint, dirty, high
gayelled houses about you. For hundreds of
years the Passover has been kept in these
streets, and the probability is, that it will be
observed there hundreds of years TO come.
Everything about you is entirely and essentu-
ally Jewish. Five minutes walk has brought
you from n Christian city to Judaic colony.
1t is not solitary example of such isolated
colonies. Every now and them in exploring
the swarming regions Of Eastern London, you
come upon a cluster of Jewish lanes. Yon
may know them by the almost universally,
opened windows, by the men and women, seat
ed in chairs upon the pavement before their
neutrality-suspicious. memorial of the patri-
archal times, when every man sat under his
own fig-tree-by the dingy shops of second
hand wares, the clusters of dirty frippcry hung
from door-posts, the plates of ol-fried fish dis
played i'll the cook-shops, and the masses of
old iron and fusty rags, blurred phials with I'M
wholesome breath, and all the chaos OF grimey
odds and ends which go to make up the stock
in trade ofthe dealer in marine stores,
The West End Jews are few and less charac-
teristic, being in general more or less fallen of
from the nation Many, in point of fact, are
in no way distingushable from the better
classes of English gentry they are in reality
Englishmen, only of Jewish descent, and of the
ancient Hebrew faith and that such persons,
not to speak of the Jews generally, do not posr
sess all the ordinary privileges of British sub
jeets, is by no means creditable to our national
polity, To neither the Hebrew gentlemen,
nor the Hebrew merchants and tradesmen in
the central and western parts of the metropo-
lis, can we refer for the true Jewish character
stics. We must look to the jew in the East
as the true object Of interest. lie lives where
his father lived; he drives the trade his father
drove; he marries woman of his own race,
and sends his children to the synagogue to do
after him what he has done himself. Such is
the class of people you meet about the "Clothes
Mart off Leadenhall street. To the eye ac-
customed to the polished Judaism of the Qua
drant or the lIaymarket, these East End eau
casians appear exaggerated Jews. Noses
seem more hooked, ringets more greasily black,
and eyes more piercingly lustrous. Everything
about their quarter wears dirty, slovenly, yet
ustling aspect. The houses are old and high,
and appear crumblng and fading away. There
is damp, fusty odor lingering over the whole
district. The glimpses you catch of old STAIN
ed wooden panelings and musty MODIFICATION
window-curtains, bring up unpleasant associs-
tons of spiders spinning undisturbed, of an
cient hereditary black beetles, and other hun
tiers of places unsavory. These suspicious
mansions arc eyidantly crowded from the
ground to the roof. unshorn men, in their
shirt-sleeves, smoke at the opened windows I;
children 90 screaming about the doors dirty
drabs of women shout to each other from
house to house; and knots of men, many of
them bearded, all of them black-haired and
black-eyed, lounge round the thresholds bar
gaining and disputing in that harsh, SWIVEL
ling, Jewish accent, which makes you some
times doubt whether those who use it be
speaking English or no. And thus you fish
you way along the cutlery slopes, amid rottng
vegetables, Gsh-ofials, well churned and tram
pied mud, and a host of other denominations.
turning from one narrow dirty lane into an
other, catching glimpses ofclose-conlined courts
and narrow, soddcn wynds, with yellowish-
hued linen fn.,aring aloft from poles, and
everywhere surrounded by the same piles of
high, grimey houses, smoke-hued, and reck-
ing with hot tetid va ors
At length perhaps, you will turn unexpect-
eddy into small square. Instantly you feel
that you are in a new hemisphere. Although
still on Jewish ground you have left behind
you the smell of fish, and the frowzy odors Of
old clothes, to experience in exchange an in
tense efiusion of the perfume of oranges. You
tread on something soft and perceive that you
are tramplng on n small mountain of orange
peel, mingled with Nasty Jumps of soft and
decayed fruit. All round you are orange
shops, or rather stalls-dark dismal places
on which you can see piles of the fruit ar
ranged upos low tables and counters, and SUI
per-intendcd by dirty Jewish boys and as dirty
Jewish matrons. You are in the Orange
Change, where all the itinerant Hebrew dea-
lers in the fruit come to purchase their stocks,
and whence the roll it about on their barrows
through all wide London.
The houses of the square are of much the
same class as those we have been describing.
A tavern at the corner boasts sign. decorated
with Hebrew inscriptions and Jewish symbols ;
and il you look about, you will recognize,
what you never see on the dead walls of any
other part of London, placards couchetl partly,
oraltogcther, in the Hebrew language and ad-
dressed TO "the Jewish publicn Many of
these documents refer to cakes, meats, and
other viands in exclusive use amongst the
Jews, principally at their times of religious
festivity. You will be sure to see advertise
ments Of "Cosher RUM and "Motsosr-the
latter being, we believe, the appelation Of the