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*Migration Histories > Jewish > Journeys
* Departure from Libau 
 
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Emigrant Railway Station, Libau.
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Emigrant Railway Station, Libau. With the extension of the Russian railway network in the late 19th century, emigrants in the northern Pale increasingly travelled via Libau, Riga, Stettin and Danzig. This image shows the dockside railway station for the emigrant traffic. A passenger steamship (with portholes in the 'tween decks) can be seen behind the station
* Moving Here catalogue reference (MJM) 1984-260
Libau, unlike other emigrant ports during this period, did not develop facilities to handle the large numbers of migrants passing though each year. Without any central emigrant station, the needs of poor Jewish migrants were met by emigrant boarding houses operated by Jews. Some of these were clean, others exceedingly dirty, and none provided facilities for bathing. For a small fee, the emigrants could cook their own food under the same roof as other Jews, Poles and Lithuanians.

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Ponies for England. The ships that transported emigrants to Britain nearly always carried also a cargo of butter, bacon joints and ponies.
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Ponies for England. The ships that transported emigrants to Britain nearly always carried also a cargo of butter, bacon joints and ponies. Jewish merchants working in Libau profited from this trade - and many of the pony handlers earned their passage in exchange for looking after the animals during the journey to Britain.
* Moving Here catalogue reference (JML) 77.14
A few hours before departure the emigrants made their way to the Winter Harbour where they boarded the vessels that would take them to Hull or London. These vessels were not designed for large numbers of passengers. They were mostly cattle ships, registered under the Danish flag, and operated by Det Forenede Dampskibs-Selskab (DFDS) of Copenhagen.

Passage on the vessels was arranged by agents in Libau. These headed a network throughout the Pale of Settlement, selling tickets for the journey to Britain, America, Canada and South Africa. They sold as many tickets as they could for a section of the vessel that they had, in effect, leased from the ship-owner. The more people they could fit into the space available, the more profit they generated.

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Creators: Nicholas J Evans

 
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