UK: 1851 Jewish population study

An 1851 study on the UK's Jewish population has been updated with several thousand names, announced Louise Messik of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Great Britain.

The 1851 Study now contains more than half the UK's Jewish population of that year, nearly 21,000 individuals representing mainly England, Wales, Scotland and some from Ireland

It also traces information before and after that year for an individual if he or she have been researched or data made available. The database tries to show where they were and what they were doing, by decade, throughout their lives. Some entries date to the 1740s-1750s, or even the 1740s, while some lived to the 1940s-1950s. While some died after a day or so, others lived to 100 or more.

What can you find? It does depend on individuals, although most entries include where and when a person was born, their parents, where and when they married their spouses, when and where their children were born, their address and occupation in that year.

Where available, other data includes residences and occupations to the 1900s, date, cause and location of death and burial. Notes are included on published biographical sources, related people in the database and more. Source references, when possible, are included with each data item.

A quick search for Cohen - my favorite default when testing a Jewish database, showed 994 Cohen records, both Sephardic and Ashkenazi, with birthplaces in several countries, London and other UK locations. A search for Da Costa showed more than 80; Rodrigues, 25.

One field shows others in the database who have the same mother's name or father's name to the individual in question.

The database represents some 200 contributors from around the world, headed by editor Petra Laidlaw.