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For the Ashkenazi Jews who arrived in large numbers from the 1880s onwards, however, things were very different. They were from poor, rural families in villages and small towns and were escaping the terror of pogroms in Eastern Europe. Most arrived with little or nothing. Many intended to move on to the USA, but when they found themselves in the UK, they settled near their place of arrival. As a result the East End of London gained a highly concentrated Jewish population. The main source of income was the textile trade. Jewish tailors and seamstresses worked at home or in the many sweatshops. For many Jewish migrants, conditions were terrible; living in extreme poverty in overcrowded, cold and damp lodgings. Many were forced into theft and prostitution.

While the earlier upper class Jews had mixed into the wider population, the new arrivals stuck closer to their traditions of language, food and culture. They were often politically active; for example in the 1889 tailors’ strike. There were tensions with the earlier Jewish settlers, too. Some Jewish leaders feared that the new arrivals would cause a rise in anti-Semitism. Others, together with non-Jews, raised money to help the refugees and ran charitable missions and soup kitchens.

Anti-Semitism was on the rise by the end of the 19th century in the climate of pseudo-scientific racism that claimed some ‘races’ were inferior to others. In novels, short stories and the popular press, Jews were portrayed as sinister, to be feared and were dehumanised. Places such as London’s Whitechapel were written about by journalists as if they were a foreign country. Pressure grew for laws restricting the immigration of ‘foreign aliens’.