You are here: Home > Research, education & online exhibitions > Family history > In depth guide to family history > Migrant ancestors > Refugees > Russian and Polish Jews

Russian and Polish Jews

Very little, other than Home Office policy files, survives on immigration in the late nineteenth century, unless people took out naturalization, which very few actually did. Home Office Registered Files in HO 45 include material on the immigration of German, Polish and Russian Jews, from 1887 to 1905. The correspondence and papers of the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police in MEPO 2 contain material on the landing of Jewish immigrants, the work of Jewish charities and settlement of immigrant Jews in the East End of London between 1887 and 1905. Aliens Entry Books in HO 5 to 1921 also contain immigration material.  Papers on the working of the Aliens Act 1905 can be found in the Aliens Restriction Entry Books in HO 162 from 1905 to 1921.

Genealogical records of the Jewish community from the period of resettlement onwards are not held here. The London Metropolitan Archives (LMA) holds records of a number of organizations of local, national and international significance, but very few genealogical records. The Bevis Marks Hall has a collection of Jewish registers from 1687 to 1837. The records of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the representative body of British Jewry, are held in the LMA (ref. ACC/3121) but are only available with the permission of the Board of Deputies.

The Chief Rabbi´s Office hold case files of adoptions, conversions, divorces and also certificates of evidence for much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. With the exception of the certificates of evidence, all other series of documents are confidential and information will only be given to those with a legitimate interest.