Burton-on-Trent Jewish Community

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Burton-upon-Trent

The town of Burton-upon-Trent in the English Midlands, has a population of about 60,000. It was a county borough from 1901 until 1974, when it merged with neighbouring localities to form the local government district (later borough) of East Staffordshire, within the county of Staffordshire.

Burton-on-Trent Jewish Community

Although there was a small Jewish community in Burton-on-Trent in the latter part of the nineteenth century and early half of the twentieth centuries, there is no record of a synagogue being established. In the 1880s, services were held in private homes.

On 4 March 1887 the Jewish residents of Burton-on-Trent and near-by Derby held a meeting to form the Derby & Burton-on-Trent Hebrew Congregation, a joint congregation for the two towns. but the attempt failed and by 1895 the two groups had definitively separated, services being held in Burton in the Masonic Hall and in Derby in the Corn Exchange.

However, the Jewish Year Book 1896/7 reported that of a Day of Atonement service was held in the Masonic Hall, Burton, at which residents of Derby and Ashby-de-la-Zouch also joined in and that Mr. S. Brown, shochet officiated and Isaac Brown was secretary.

Nevertheless, the close relationship with the Derby continued and its minister served a visiting teacher and shochet in Burton. (For the early history of Jews in Derby and Burton on Trent, see paper by Samuel Simpson.)

There is no Jewish cemetery in Burton-on-Trent.

Jewish Communities and Congregations in Staffordshire