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THE CONTINUING CLIMATE OF HATE

Even though Northampton treated its Jewish inhabitants so badly, it is clear that the Jewish community made a deep, and near indelible impression. For centuries after there were many folk memories, and traditions, concerning the Jews from the period before the expulsion. Many centred on St. Sepulchre's Church, at the North Gate of the town, which the vulgar tradition held to be the former synagogue.

In the mid 17th century it seems a small stone cross was blown off the roof of St. Sepulchre's in a gale. Not long after a full blown folk tradition had been born, relating that the cross was a relic of a memorial to the 'ritual murder' of 1277.

Anti-semitism persisted into the 20th century, with local Jews reporting anti-Jewish feeling in the town in the 1930s and 40s. A symptom, or even possibly a cause, was the book The Story of Northampton by A P White, Senior History Master of Northampton School in 1914. Evidently fascinated and repelled by the medieval Jewish history of the town, he devoted considerable attention to the matter, richly evoking every anti-Semitic stereotype of the Jews along the way and even seeming to approve of the occasional murder of a Jew by his 'worthy ancestors'.

A choice extracts of this work relates how; 'Every Good Friday our worthy ancestors drove them to church in a body, where they were compelled to listen to an abusive sermon directed against the sins of their race. By this annual method of relieving their outraged Christian sensibilities, and by occasionally beating an unfortunate Jew to death, the Northampton burgesses quieted any qualms of conscience they may have felt for their sin in allowing such a detestable race to exist in a Christian country.'

In more recent years, some locals employed in the leather, boot and shoe trade also evidently blamed Jewish proprietors for the terminal decline of the industry. They saw their employers shutting up shop and stripping assets. In fact, however, the factories were already doomed by foreign competition from as early as the 1950s and by the 1970s and 1980s, many of the businesses were worth little as going concerns.