Cramped but full of hope: step inside a Jewish flat from 1913 - The Jewish Chronicle

The Delinsky family’s two-room tenement flat feels cramped and spartan, a reminder of the tough conditions that awaited Jews fleeing unimaginable hardship in eastern Europe at the beginning of the 20^th century.

But, if you look closely, there are clearly visible signs of establishment, Jewish continuity and hope in this meticulous replica of the Rothschild Buildings dwelling, the latest exhibit at the Museum of the Home in Hoxton, east London.

The main room features Judaica such as candlesticks, a salt-and-pepper set engraved with Hebrew letters, kiddush cups, and a mass-produced Seder plate from the early 1900s, ordered from a local crockery shop in Brick Lane.

In fact, these flats were a step up on the majority of east London housing at that time. Built by the Industrial Dwellings Society to house a huge influx of Jewish immigrants to the capital in the early 20^th century, they included toilets and kitchens – luxuries unknown to East End slums dwellers of the Victorian era.

Part of the museum’s Real Rooms galleries, the Jewish room depicts the Delinskys’ 1913 flat set up for Shabbos.

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Curator Louis Platman hopes the exhibit will resonate with Jewish visitors, invoking visions of their own ancestral roots in the East End.

Speaking to the JC on the eve of the unveiling of the room, Platman said: “There is very little Jewish representation in non-Jewish museums.

“One of the communities of east London’s history that we and our audience felt was under-represented was the East End Jewish community, so that was one of the impetuses in doing a room looking at the Jewish East End: the need to get more representation of Jewish history into the museum.”

The experience has led Platman to rediscover his own eastern European Jewish history. “I’ve talked to my dad a lot and asked him more questions about our family,” he said. “It has been fascinating to learn more about that history and understand the context in which my family came here.”

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Like many in the East End, the Delinsky father worked as a tailor, while his wife brought home textiles to mend at her sewing machine.

With four children, the Delinskys were typical of the residents in the Rothschild Buildings, where 70 per cent of families were employed in the textiles industries, according to Platman.

Text outside the room explains the family’s backstory – from the pogroms of eastern Europe to the sweatshop strikes of the 1880s and the 1905 Aliens Act, which declared that “undesirable immigrants” would be denied entry to Britain.

Curator Louis Platman has spent the last year creating the Real Rooms galleries in the Museum of the Home - one of which depicts a Jewish family at the beginning of the twentieth-century[Missing Credit]

“The rooms today would look cramped, but it was a huge improvement to what it would have been. In terms of how well-off they were, there was a wide range of families in these buildings, but everyone would have felt lucky to have a place there,” Platman said, describing the Delinskys as “an aspirational family” and noting the relative opulence of an inside toilet.

Unlike many who later moved out of the East End, most Jewish families in the early 20th century preferred to remain in the Rothschild Buildings and often rented additional flats for their growing children rather than relocating to the suburbs.

“The buildings had good amenities, low rent, and a fantastic community spirit,” Platman explained.

“Nearly everyone was Jewish, and Yiddish united them as a language. Their kids would all play in the yard. People were reluctant to leave, even if they could afford to.”

Platman said the museum encourages visitors to engage with the space as they would with a dollhouse, adding: “We want people to have fun immersing themselves in the environment.”

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The curator has worked at the museum for seven years and specialises in domestic social history. He reckons the Museum of the Home “does specific recreation of domestic interiors unlike anyone else. We’re the only museum of the home in the world.”

Many of the objects in the galleries come from donations. “We’ve got a few different prayer books, including one from a donor whose great-grandmother fled Romania. It’s a Romanian-to-Hebrew prayer book.”

Other items were sourced from eBay and antique shops. Keen to work with the community, Platman said: “We want to co-curate the spaces with the communities that they represent.”

Platman worked with the South West Essex Reform Synagogue, where he met members who started life in the Rothschild Buildings at the shul’s lunch club.

He was surprised by “how little things had changed from the histories that I had read from people living in the Rothschild Buildings at the turn of the century and those who grew up there decades later.

“People still had tin baths in the yard, a lot grew up without electricity and with coal-burning stoves as the only source of heat and light in the room.

“It was fantastic talking to them and getting their memories of the East End,” he added, and the conversations made him realise the importance of Shabbat.

Supported by The Wolfson Foundation and the National Lottery Heritage Fund, the Real Rooms opened on July 17. Entry is free

Topics:

East London

Museum

Jewish history