Keeping kosher on the 18th century road

Oh, as a history buff I love these extracts.
These establishments were found in the "unlikeliest" of places - for example, Ironbridge, not, one would have thought, a particularly heimishe location. And so it proved. In the mid-nineteenth century a Jewish pedlar who set out from there was found murdered in a field ... The miscreant was never caught, although suspicion dogged a fellow-Jew.

Miriam, I always enjoy your posts both here and on your own blog, but this one is particularly interesting, as is Yvetta's comment above. You don't mention whether or not the book states that the inn keeper was himself Jewish, but one suspects from the tone (and the way that he was able to write in Hebrew is put across as worthy of note) suggests that he was not. We hear and read so much about the horrific things that were done to our ancestors and the terrible times Jews have had to endure - but little anecdotes such as this one serve to remind us that we have always had friends too.

It sounds to me as if keeping kosher in late 18th/early 19th Century England was actually easier than it is today, if you're unfortunate enough to live outside North London/Manchester/Gateshead or somewhere else with a large Jewish population. We have one shop with a very limited range of kosher goods on sale where I live, and they seem to be shrinking their range!

JLCOhen, I'm the guy who posts the blog which Miriam linked to. I'm sorry this wasn't at all clear. The innkeepers were not Jewish; they held the key to the locked closet. However, it was the pedlars themselves, they were Jewish naturally, who would clean the utensils by themselves and return it to the cupboard where it would remain locked until the next Jewish pedlar arrived. However, before returning it to the cupboard the pedlar himself would write his name and the weekly Torah portion in Hebrew on the utensil in chalk. Since few, if any, non-Jewish innkeepers could have forged such markings, if the pedlar found the markings undisturbed he would take this as evidence that the utensil was not tampered with since last used by a fellow observant Jew; a type of hashgacha marking if you will. As for the motivations of the innkeepers, surely there was a financial incentive to accomodate paying Jewish customers. Nevertheless, you are quite correct, and there've always been fair and good people, even to Jews!

JLC, the Ironbridge hotel was run by Jews. I have come across references to at least one Jewish trader in a West Country venue (I think it was either Falmouth or Penzance) giving board and lodging at his home to pedlars, who worked the district during the week and returned to that house for Shabbat. Not sure what they ate during the week - presumably not the miners' pasties!

Thanks for clearing that up, OntheMainLine - I suspected that would have been the case. Although there would undoubtedly have been a financial incentive to accommodate the needs of Jewish guests, there have been many instances where such an incentive existed and yet businesses still refused to trade with Jews - there were many pre-WW2, in Germany and in other nations. The same sort of thing could be seen here in the UK right up until just 30 years or so ago, when an embarrassingly considerable number of pubs displayed signs along the lines of "no dogs, no blacks, no Irish" despite the money that each group might wish to spend (ok, maybe not the dogs. They prefer wine bars to pubs). Maybe I'm just hopelessly optimistic and looking for a good human soul where only sound business sense actually existed, but I still like to think the inn keeper must have had a certain liking for Jews to have allowed them to have done what he did.

Yvetta - who knows what they ate? It could have been pasties. After all, a pasty (pastie?) is only a really big kreplach...!