Finding Dawid Zmidek

By Steve Smith

When Jeff, Dad (Anton), Marq and I were in the initial stages of planning the trip to Poland and continuing the family research, we thought about trying to find out when exactly Dawid Zmidek arrived here. A conversation with Jon Sions had given me the idea to try to find the shipping manifests, and after some enquiries and jumping through several hoops I was sent an Excel document with all the arrivals through The Jews Temporary Shelter database.

The shelter worked in conjunction with the shipping lines that brought immigrants over. A lot of those that came to London were amongst the very poorest, including those conned into thinking they had tickets to continue on to the USA or South Africa, or who couldn’t afford the onward journey. The Jews Temporary Shelter

Knowing that the family came here with very little, and the proximity to the shelter when they lived in Princes Sq., there was a good chance of them being on the records. But after an initial search nothing..no Zmideks, or Elbergs, who I was also searching for.

I’d read that a fire had destroyed a number of the records of arrivals from 1903 onward, just around the time they arrived, and after all the trouble getting the records, it would be just our luck if they were amongst them. Disappointed to say the least, and subsequently I ended that line of research.

But a few months later, I decided to just have another look, and there included in the Excel was a tab I’d missed the first time with another set of records for the correct time period. One stood out. A record of a David Lmidek born in Kielce (spelled phonetically in the records), arriving here in 1902 aged 44 on the ship ’Bat II’,the SS Batavier II.

The name seemed odd. During all the research, I had never seen an L followed by an M in a surname, but Kielce was the administrative district of Chmielnik, where the family was from, and the age fitted what we knew about Dawid also. It seemed too close to be someone else.

I double checked family surnames on the JRI website. There was not one record of Lmidek as a surname, so came to the conclusion that it must be a Z inputted incorrectly. Jeff agreed, pursued it, located the holders of the microfilm of the original records and arranged for us an appointment at the London Metropolitan Archives centre.

After being unable to visit due to the lockdown for over a year, we were finally able to get an appointment about a month or so ago and myself and Dan (Kutcher) went down to have a look.

We were handed a microfilm and after searching a whole year's worth of entries, we still could not find the entry. More frustration! Until Jeff and the staff there ascertained we’d been given the wrong records, located the correct one, and there it was. Clearly a Z on the original. Arrived Oct 5th 1902 with £2 in his pocket, around £250 in today’s money. He came alone and, according to other documents, Sura Gitel and the children came over later, most likely the following year in 1903.

The ship he came on, the actual arrival date and first known record of the family in London.

Original records from The Jews Temporary Shelter

The SS Batavier II. The ship regularly sailed between London and Rotterdam, which at the time, along with Hamburg, was the main point of embarkation when travelling from Poland, usually docking at Custom House in the City of London: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Batavier_II_(1897)

Steve and Dan at the Archive