The Hebrew School Log Book

Description:The Hebrew School Log Book (1867-1886).

This is a page from one of the log books from the National Hebrew School, covering the years of 1867-1886. The Jewish teacher’s entry makes several complaints about his pupils, such as ‘P.M., punished a boy for throwing stones and cutting anothers hand’. More dramatically, the log book entry also includes the comment, “boys unpunctual. Afraid to come through the street on account of the “Murphy Riots”.

With this comment, the log book not only gives a fascinating insight into the life of Jewish education in the nineteenth century; it also gives us important information on what is happening in wider Birmingham, where many religious groups were living together, often in poor conditions. In 'A History of Birmingham' (1993), Chris Upton gives the following account of the “Murphy Riots”, an infamous attack not on Jewish people this time, but on Irish Catholics:

“William Murphy, a convert from Catholicism, arrived in the town as a member of the Protestant Evangelical Mission. Barred from Town Hall, Murphy set up his ‘mission’ in a wooden building in Carr’s Lane, a location that had the advantage of being close to the Irish Catholics against whom his rhetoric was directed. While Murphy railed at Catholic doctrine (“no mass for no money”) and Catholic Priests (“murderers, cannibals, pickpocketers and liars”), an ugly cocktail was being mixed outside. Anti catholic mobs, Irish roughs, impartial looters and confused police battled for control of the streets” (Upton, p104).

From apparently offhand pieces of information left in documents like the 'Hebrew School Log Book', it is often possible to piece together a picture of the unstable political and religious landscape of mid-nineteenth century Birmingham.