Jews in Bath

In 1772, Joseph Sigmond, a young Jewish man exiled from his home in the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania, arrived homeless and penniless in Exeter. Advised to study dentistry, by the early 1800s he had opened a surgery in Edgar Buildings, Bath.

Just round the corner in Bartlett Street was Jacob Abrahams, an optician, and if Joseph wanted to discuss the latest dental techniques he could do so with rival dentist Soloman Abraham Durlacher in Union Street. Maybe Joseph’s wife Catherine was a client of Betsy Duralcher, a chiropodist. She could buy her shoes from Figgins and Moses, her jewellery from Henry Moore, and her furs from J Isaacs. In the evening perhaps the Sigmonds went to a concert given by John Braham, one of the most celebrated opera singers of the times or to one of the masked balls that Joseph sponsored.

These Jewish health professionals, artists, craftsmen and traders were the beginning of the small community of Jews from central Europe who, fleeing conflict, persecution and poverty, made Bath their home. The city with its famous hot springs was a place of genteel residence, attracting fashionable visitors with money to spend setting up their houses for the season, visiting the optician or dentist and shopping for jewellery and clothes.

This book brings alive the individuals and families who lived, worked and worshipped in the city, together with the history of their synagogues and Burial Ground. It not only reveals an untold part of Bath’s history, but is the first comprehensive account of one of the few provincial Jewish communities in England and Wales, a history hitherto under-researched and rarely told.

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The book covers the history of the Jewish community, identifying individual histories within a wider context of Anglo-Jewish history. Plus a detailed history of the two synagogues that the community supported, and of the Burial Ground just outside the city that was the starting point for the whole project.

There are extensive appendices listing community leaders, trades and professions, outlying communities, as well as ancillary research into tangental Jewish associations within Bath.

See the whole contents from the contents page.

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Some page spreads from the book:

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Price £20 (plus £5* delivery in UK).
These books are sold at little more than the cost of production. If you could make an additional donation toward the Burial Ground's upkeep, it would be greatly apprediated.

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