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Four hundred fifty three membership form pages for the Beth Ha-Medresh on 62 Monatague Road, E8, London. All but the last three pages have been stamped in the upper right hand corner, thus providing the pagination. All the pages through 439 have entries. The top of the form calls for the name, synagogue & Fed. No., address, Cont. (contribution), Seats G…..L….., and Arrears C. F. Below these headers are eight groups of columns with the headings Arr. Last qtr. . . ., Arr. 1st qtr. . . .through 3rd qtr. For 1969 and then repeated for 1970. Within each group are columsn for Date, Con. Sig. (signature). All of the pages through 439 have the names, addresses, and contributions. There are also entries for Arr. Last qtr 1969. This book is a valuable resource for research on Anglo-Jewry in the noted period.
London Jewry represents the largest and most important Jewish community in England. During the 1950s and 1960s, Jews, who by this time had generally risen rapidly on the socioeconomic scale, settled in ever-increasing numbers in suburban areas, particularly in the north and northwest of London. It has been estimated that the East End, which at the beginning of the 20th century contained about 125,000 Jews and in 1929 still had some 85,000 Jews, was left with no more than 30,000 Jews within a few years after World War II. The northwest London area alone was said to have contained some 85,000 Jews by 1950. The vast majority of Jews always lived to the north of the Thames, and by the end of the 1960s they were spread along and below a suburban arc stretching from Wembley, Harrow, Stanmore, and Edgware in the west through Finchley and Palmers Green in the north to Ilford in the east. Below this arc were heavy concentrations of Jews in what may be termed "gilded ghettos," such as Golders Green, or semi-decaying "zones of transition," such as Stamford Hill, where newer non-Jewish immigrants settled in the 1960s in increasing numbers. The total Jewish population of Greater London in 1970 was estimated at 280,000.
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