Sheerness and the children of Abraham

Description

Author: David Hughes

148 pages

It was during the time of Nelson that a significant community of Jewish traders and entrepreneurs established itself as a colourful presence in the Naval dockyard town of Sheerness in the Isle of Sheppey.

This book charts the story of this now forgotten colony of Jews. It opens up to us a world which contained an incident-packed gallery of events; often dramatic, sometimes traumatic, and occasionally tragic. Painted is a picture of people whose lives would be laced with intermittent scenes of internecine feuding, skulduggery and violence. Against this image however the Jews are revealed to have formed a generally hard-working element of the business fraternity at Sheerness, contributing much to the commercial activities of the town.

The narrative concludes by chronicling how the same spirit of an enterprise that once attracted the Jews to Sheppey would also finally lead to their departure. As the years gathered following the disappearance of the Jews from Sheerness their former presence passed out of human memory and their interesting stories of their event-strewn lives and times in the town were likely to be lost forever.

This is a situation that the publication of this book will do much to try to remedy.