The Cousinhood Goes to the Seaside

Why do so many roads in Hove have Jewish names?

Sir Isaac Lyon Goldsmid, National Portrait Gallery

I walked through the streets of Hove a couple of times last week. Hove, for those who are not familiar with England, is a seaside town adjoining Brighton on the south coast, 54 miles from London. It has been a favourite with holidaymakers and day trippers ever since the railway line from London was laid in 1841.

As I crossed from Brighton into Hove I walked down Goldsmid Road. The name was familiar but many road names are, I didn’t think any more about it. A little further along the name changed to Davigdor Road. That was interesting. By the time I came to the Montefiore Hospital on the corner of Montefiore Road, I was intrigued.

If you live in Brighton or Hove, or know them well, you are probably familiar with these roads, though you may not know their history. If you do, please add your comments below.

Goldsmid Road bears the name of Sir Isaac Lyon Goldsmid. He was born in 1778 into the English branch of a wealthy family whose roots lay in Amsterdam. The patriarch of the family, Benedict Goldsmid, Isaac Lyon’s great grandfather had made his fortune in trade and had established an extensive network of relatives and contacts across Northern Europe. Isaac Lyon’s grandfather Aaron came to London in 1763, possibly sent there to extend the family network into the British Empire.

Isaac Lyon’s father Asher was a partner in a firm of bullion brokers established by Abraham Mocatta, a member of an eminent and wealthy Sefardi family. The Mocattas had been among the first Jews to enter England after 1656 when Oliver Cromwell allowed them to practice their religion freely.  

The Mocattas and the Goldsmids belonged to an exclusive elite of prosperous Jewish families, prominent in business and trade, with high level connections among the English royalty and nobility. They were a de facto aristocracy within England’s small Jewish community, numbering only around 25,000 in the mid 19th century.

The author and columnist Chaim Bermant nicknamed the elite ‘The Cousinhood’ in his humorous and informative book of the same name, because they married and interbred among themselves. In his words they were “a compact union of exclusive brethren with blood and money flowing in a small circle which opened up from time to time to admit a Beddington, a Montagu, a Franklin, a Sassoon, or anyone else who attained rank or fortune, and then snapped shut again.”

Isaac Lyon Goldsmid married his cousin Isabel in 1804. One of the first “Lady Visitors” of Bedford College, run exclusively by women, for women, she hosted fashionable high society salons at their sumptuous London home, St John’s Lodge, in Regents Park. Her guests included Queen Victoria, her son Prince Alfred and the composer Felix Mendelssohn.

Isabel and Isaac Lyon Goldsmid had two sons and six daughters. One of their daughters, Emma, married the nephew of Sir Moses Montefiore, a friend of Queen Victoria and undisputed leader of Anglo-Jewry, a giant of a man before whom all other members of the Cousinhood deferred. Another daughter, Mary Ada, married a Mocatta. Their daughter Rachel however, finding a way to break away from the centripetal forces of the Cousinhood, married a Frenchman. It was a mistake.

The Frenchman’s name was Count Solomon Henry d’Avigdor. His family of merchants and bankers had lived in Nice since the late 17th century. Wealthy and distinguished they were to Nice what the Goldsmids and the rest of the Cousinhood were to London. Henry, by all accounts, was not a fitting match for Rachel. Although he was the son of an observant Jew he had a reputation as a playboy, hedonistic, self-centred and indulged. He was very different to Rachel, who came from a sober 19th century Anglo-Jewish family with their dutiful, charitable virtues and their sense of obligation to their less fortunate brethren.

Under the terms of a Goldsmid will,  when a daughter of the family married she was obliged to retain her maiden surname. So when Rachel Goldsmid and Count Solomon Henry D’Avigdor married a new family name, Davidgor-Goldsmid, was added to the unofficial Cousinhood register. This is why, in Hove, Goldsmid Road becomes Davigdor Road (or vice versa when you walk back).

The marriage between Henry and Rachel did not go well. They drifted apart; she remained in his chateau while he had affairs, dropping in to see her from time to time. Henry was not a religious man but when they had married he had undertaken not to interfere in the religious education of their children. But when Rachel heard that he had converted to Catholicism and was planning to baptise their children and send their daughter to a convent, she knew she had to get them away from him. The previous year a Jewish child had been abducted by Catholic authorities in Italy and Rachel feared that with Henry’s powerful French connections the same might happen to her kids. She made a run for it. She set off in a convoy of three coaches, one for her, one for the children and their governess and one for the luggage. They arrived in London safely. Count Henry became history. But the Davigdor-Goldsmid name remained.

Isaac Lyon was a social reformer and progressive thinker. Inspired by the ideas of the philosopher Jeremy Bentham, he attached himself to nearly every progressive cause on the agenda of 19th century reformers. He contributed to campaigns for prison reform, the abolition of slavery and better public health. He took a lead in opening up education to all, irrespective of their religion. At that time London had no university of its own while only Anglicans were allowed to attend the other universities at Oxford, Cambridge and Durham.

In 1826 Isaac Lyon established a council with the intention of creating England’s first secular university, open to students from all religions. The press scoffed at the idea. John Bull (the Daily Mail of its day) called it a ‘humbug, a school for cockney boys, promoted by stockbrokers and Jew-brokers’.

The 12 person council established  by Isaac Lyon included Lord John Russell,  the Duke of Norfolk, a smattering of lesser known business leaders, two Goldsmids, two Mocattas and a Rothschild. This coalition of Jewish Cousinhood and English nobility was never going to be deterred by the mocking of the press. Isaac Lyon bought a site on Gower Street for £30,000 and donated it to the new institution, soon to be known as University College London. Its main building is still on the site that Isaac Lyon bought over 200 years ago. In the main lobby there is a glass box. In it, on view to all, sits the rather sorry looking body of Jeremy Bentham (really!).

The Cousinhood was a small circle of men and women who by and large considered it their duty to use their wealth and position for the benefit of the oppressed and the poor, particularly among their less fortunate Jewish brethren. They represented a form of benevolent capitalism that is much harder to locate today. Moses Montefiore travelled the world using the not so soft diplomatic power of the British Empire to right wrongs. The Cousinhood’s most important achievement however was their victory in the fight for the emancipation of the Jews of Britain.  

It was a long fight, marked by small victories. Isaac Lyon was a prime mover but he had limited success. In 1829, as Parliament discussed the emancipation of Catholics, he lobbied for a similar provision for Jews. He managed to have a Bill presented to Parliament but it failed three times.

It fell to another member of the Cousinhood, David Salomons, to achieve the first breakthrough. In 1835 he was elected Sheriff of London and Middlesex. Once elected he was nevertheless barred from taking office because he could not swear an oath ‘on the faith of a Christian’. Lord John Russell, who had been involved with the foundation of University College, saved the day with an Act to amend the oath. Salomons served his term as sheriff then three years later he became the first Jewish  Justice of the Peace. In 1855 he was the first Jew to be appointed Lord Mayor of London.

The obstacles were disappearing. But the big prize still eluded England’s Jews. Lionel de Rothschild was elected as MP for the City of London on five separate occasions, but each time he was debarred because he would not take the Parliamentary oath requiring him to swear ‘on the true faith of a Christian’.  It wasn’t until 1858, when Disraeli was made Leader of the House of Commons that the regulations for taking the oath were amended. Rothschild, after waiting for 15 years, finally took his seat.

In the meantime Isaac Lyon Goldsmid had also been recognised for his unrelenting activism.  In 1841 he became a baronet, the first English Jew to be given a hereditary title.

So what has all this to do with Hove? In 1830 Isaac Lyon purchased the Wick Estate, most of which was then still countryside. Other members of the Cousinhood, included David Salomons, also bought properties in the town. Hove became a seaside retreat for the Cousinhood.

As Isaac Lyon and his descendants developed the Wick Estate, they named the streets they built after friends, relatives and those who had helped them during the struggle for Jewish rights. There is a Cromwell Road, because he was the first to allow the return of the Jews, and there are Landsdown, Holland and Lyndhurst Roads, because they were among the English peers who supported the battle for emancipation. And then there are the roads named after members of the Goldsmid and Davigdor-Goldsmid families: Osmond, Lyon, Julian and more. It is said that there are more roads in Hove with a Jewish connection than in any other town in Britain.