England: Southampton's Old Jewish Cemetery

Southampton, England. Old Jewish Cemetery. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2019.

Southampton, England. Old Jewish Cemetery. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2019.

Southampton, England. Old Jewish Cemetery. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2019.

England: Southampton's Old Jewish Cemetery
by Samuel D. Gruber

When I was in England last month I made an unplanned visit to the Old Jewish Cemetery in Southampton, which was opened in the mid-19th century. It was a rainy day on the Common, but the rain stopped long enough for me to poke around the small burial ground, and to take some photos. Here's what I learned and saw.

Southampton Jewish Cemetery is situated within Southampton's (Old) Cemetery, one of the England's oldest municipal cemeteries, located at the south end of the Southampton Common. Ten acres of cemetery were designed in 1843 by noted London landscape gardener J.C. Loudon, the year he published his influential book On the Laying Out, Planting and Managing of Cemeteries. Local nurseryman W.H. Rogers adapted Loudon's design. Five more acres were added in 1862 and an additional 12 acres in 1885. The cemetery is noted for its many graves of war dead, especially from World War I, and also graves or markers for victims of the 1912 sinking of the Titanic, which sailed from Southampton with a largely local crew.

The cemetery was opened in May 1846 by the Bishop of Winchester for Church of England burials. A section was left unconsecrated, however, for dissenting religions and agnostics. Soon after opening a petition was sent to the town council requesting that a portion be set aside for Jewish burials. Consequently, a small Jewish section with it own pre-burial hall was created and the first burial took place in 1854. The space is almost entirely filled today. 

This is one of the earliest modern Jewish cemeteries in England, and the first within a municipal cemetery It follows the example of Glasgow, Scotland, where Sharman Kadish has pointed out "the earliest example of a Jewish plot planned and landscaped as part of the overall design of a municipal cemetery" is the Jews’ Enclosure at the Glasgow Necropolis, laid out in 1829–33 on the model of Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris (1804). Kadish describes the earliest burial in the entire Glasgow cemetery as "that of Joseph Levi, aged 62, quill merchant, who was interred on 12 September 1832 in the Jewish plot. Levi had died of cholera, an epidemic raging in the city at the time. His coffin was filled with lime and water either to prevent the spread of infection or as protection against grave robbers." (Sharman Kadish, "The Situation, Preservation and Care of Jewish Cemeteries in the United Kingdom" in Jewish Cemeteries and Burial Culture in Europe, Berlin: ICOMOS, Journals of the German National Committee No. 53 (2011), pp. 82-87").

Across Europe more Jewish sections were included in municipal cemeteries. This practice began in France and throughout the 19th and early 20th century and spread to countries in Central and Eastern Europe, too. (See Rudolf Klein's recent book Metropolitan Jewish Cemeteries (ICOMOS, 2018).

The Southampton Cemetery is owned and managed by the Southampton City Council, but the Jewish section is managed and maintained by the local Jewish Community.
 

Southampton, England. Sign with map of Commons. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2019

The stones in the Southampton Jewish cemetery contain several with noteworthy though common decorations, especially a series of round-headed stones that include reliefs showing an arm and hand from heaven wielding a ax and felling a tree, a sign of someone cut down in the prime of life. The stones are similar in source, shape and design, suggesting a single stone carver was responsible for many stones. It is not known (to me, at least) if the stones were prepared locally or shipped from London or elsewhere.

One of these stones with the felled tree tells the sad story of Zelda Melamed, age 48, who died en route to joining her husband in Brooklyn. Southampton is a port city, so it often was a point of transit. It is not known if Zelda died on a ship en route to Brooklyn via Southampton - perhaps leaving from Hamburg - and thus her body was transported here, or if there was another circumstance. The date of the stone - 1930 - suggests that Zelda may already have been in America and was returning from a trip to the old country. That is because the United States pretty much closed is borders to new Jewish (and other) immigrants in 1925.

Southampton, England. Old Jewish Cemetery. Grave of Zelda Melamed (1930). Photo: Samuel Gruber 2019

Zelda's is also one of three stones I saw that still had traces of a enameled portrait of the deceased. The method of fixing a photographic image on enamel or porcelain by firing it in a kiln was already patented in France by 1854. The practice spread widely in Europe and by the late 19th century was being used regularly in cemeteries as a much cheaper alternative to statuary for the personalizing of the gravestone. In America, the practice had caught on by 1900 and in the early 1900s the mail-order retailer Sears-Roebuck was advertising in its catalogue for “Imperishable Limoges porcelain portraits [which] preserve the features of the deceased . . .”

Southampton, England. Old Jewish Cemetery. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2019.

 Southampton, England. Old Jewish Cemetery. Grave of Zelda Melamed (1930), dtl. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2019.

Southampton, England. Old Jewish Cemetery. Grave of Zelda Melamed (1930), dtl. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2019.

  Southampton, England. Old Jewish Cemetery. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2019.

Southampton, England. Old Jewish Cemetery. Stone with portrait on ceramic. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2019.

Southampton, England. Old Jewish Cemetery. Stone with portrait on ceramic, detail. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2019.

Southampton, England. Old Jewish Cemetery. Stone with portrait on ceramic. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2019.

Southampton, England. Old Jewish Cemetery. Stone with portrait on ceramic, detail Photo: Samuel Gruber 2019.

As far I can tell, most burials were made along rows in the order of death, and this explains the groupings of often similar stones as they were carved and set within a rarely short time span and were most likely provided by the same monument maker.

Southampton, England. Old Jewish Cemetery. Two stones of men who died in 1923. They appear unrelated, but the stones are cut by the same monument maker. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2019.

Southampton, England. Old Jewish Cemetery. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2019.

Southampton, England. Old Jewish Cemetery. These three stones on the right date from 1930-1931. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2019.

At least three stones show hands raised in the Priestly Blessing, indicating that the deceased were Cohanim; the names of these Cohanim are Abraham Collins, and Benny and Moses Cohen. Only the grave of Abraham Collins is at the edge of the cemetery; the other two were in the central area. Since the graves are set close together it does not look like there was ever "Cohanim walk" to protect ritual purity. More likely, such matters were not a great concern to the families of the deceased.

Southampton, England. Old Jewish Cemetery. Gravestone of Abraham Collins (died 1894). Photo: Samuel Gruber 2019.

Southampton, England. Old Jewish Cemetery. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2019.

One other stone shows hands - those of a woman giving the blessings over the Sabbath lights. The hands are shown with candlesticks, a traditional emblem to denote a good and pious woman.

Southampton, England. Old Jewish Cemetery. Gravestone of Kate Rosenberg Bachins (?), 1923. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2019.

Southampton, England. Old Jewish Cemetery. Gravestone of Kate Rosenberg Bachins (?), 1923. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2019.

At least one war veteran is buried in the cemetery. Lt. P.L. Moss died in 1946, and there is one O.B.E. (Officer of the British Empire) recipient:  Nathan Turk, Chairman, Westminster Savings Committee who was named an O.B.E. in 1953 ans died in 1985.

Southampton, England. Old Jewish Cemetery. Grave of Lt. P.L. Moss, died 1946. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2019.

Southampton, England. Old Jewish Cemetery. Grave of Nathan Turk, O.B.E. (right), died 1985. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2019.

FOR FURTHER READING:

On Jewish cemeteries in England also see Kadish, “ Bet Hayim: An Introduction to Jewish Funerary Art and Architecture in Britain”, in: Transactions of the Ancient Monuments Society 49 (2005), pp. 31–58; S. Kadish, “ Jewish funerary architecture in Britain and Ireland since 1656”, in: Jewish Historical Studies [JHSE] 43 (2011), pp. 59 –88.