This photo emerged as part of the a Jewish Genealogical Society event last month. It was found in an envelope of photos relating to the Delamere Forest School for Jewish Children with Special Needs. Historian Bill Williams picks up the story:
“I couldn’t identify the place, but on close scrutiny I noticed that the young girl second from the left at the front of the photo was black. Since the photo came from a Jewish family, it was unlikely to have been taken in what was then Salford’s ‘Black Quarter’ (a term used by the Salford police) in and around Greengate, where no Jewish families lived, or in Hightown, where no black families lived. But by the late 1930s, a handful of the black families of former seamen are known to have moved into Strangeways, a short distance from Greengate, and which was very much an area of Jewish settlement.
My tentative conclusion was that this photo was taken in one of the streets in working-class Strangeways: the only one of that period illustrating a black presence there in the 1930s. Later (from the 1950s) a small black community evolved in the streets between Great Ducie Street and Waterloo Road.”
Do you recognise the street? If you have any ideas, please email archiveslocalstudies@manchester.gov.uk or comment on the photo at our Flickr page.
Visit our website for more photos of Manchester and for information on Manchester’s black and ethnic minority communities.
