Records/Passports for 19th Century Immigrants

[Want-to-know]

I am conducting research into my family tree. The 4 sides of my family all came to England from different parts of Europe in the last half of the 19th Century. I know they came from what was Bessarabia, Lithuania, Holland and Poland, but do not know from which port they departed from or arrived at, when landing in the UK.. Does anybody know if records were kept when immigrants arrived in this country at that time and where I could find such records? Thank you.

[dot.haukes]

Passports would probably have expired and be invalid soon after arrival but in the UK they would have applied for naturalsation in most cases. the naturalisation papers should survive and they are at Kew
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/familyhisto ry/guide/migrantancestors/naturalisation.htm
But it is possible that when you actually search the records you will find the family under a slightly different surname than they became known by in this country, as they probably anglacised their surname and probably christian names too. for instance:
My children's step-great grandfather's identification card issued after his naturalisation in 1902 in London, gives his name as Barnett Emmanuel, his parents were Julius and Julia Emmanuel. On their naturalisation papers they are Yudel and Yuddia Manolinski . If any family papers have survibed from naturalisation you would be looking for the id cards (small pastel coloured like our old 1 year passports) or the actual copy of the naturalisation certificate, which is a B4 folio on thin paper.

[Want-to-know]

Thank you for the information. I do not know if my relatives went through the naturalisation process, as they were dirt poor and did not speak English, but it is worth checking. I know from checking census forms, in some cases, that there were different spellings of surnames as well as first names, which makes checking more complicated.

I would just like to have found out what date they arrived in England, from which port they departed and where they landed.

Once again, thank you.

[dot.haukes]

all of that information would be on their naturalisation documents, which most immigrants would need to be able to work, plus as World war 1 commenced, any foreign nationals had to prove their origins and nationality to avoid being put in the detention camps around london or various locations across the British isles, and so poor or not, they would likely have gone through the process

[Want-to-know]

Thank you for that information. I was not aware of that. Than my next step will be with regard to naturalisation.

[leggyforvera]

last half of the 19th century was 1850 to 1900 .

In the later part of the nineteenth century and up to World War I, passports were not required, on the whole, for international travel in Europe, and crossing a border was easy. Consequently, comparatively few people had passports. The breakdown of the European passport system of the early part of the nineteenth century was a result of rail travel. Trains, used extensively from the mid-nineteenth century onward, traveled rapidly, carried numerous passengers, and crossed many borders. Those factors made enforcement of passport laws difficult.

[dot.haukes]

Just to clarify how dangerous it was to not be able to identify yourself and your nationality before the Great War, my children's great great grandmother Lucy Hawkes nee M�ller was born in Saxe-Coburg and married William Hawkes in Hammersmith, but in 1914 her family were in the detention camp at the White City, she managed to avoid internment herself but her family suffered greatly as did their business.

[dot.haukes]

Lucy's father Henry arrived in London in the late 1870s and changed his name to Miller very quickley but his sons were still put into the camp at White City, even though they were born in london in the 1880s.

[dot.haukes]

What infact you would need to be aware of is that during the mass immigration into London during the latter part of the 19th C, the focus was not on gaining citizenship nor on legalising their status in their new country, it was ust on survival. The system that eventually had to cope with the mass registration of immigrants developed at the same time and so it took along time for people to trust the process and recognise the advantages of becomin a British citizen. The elderly immigrants especially that had escaped the persecutoin of eastern European regimes were the last to accept the new nationality as an essential proces to give them security.
(again, immigration is one of my longer tutorials and is very complex, but you should have enough to make inroads)

[BarLouise]

On the Ancestry website are lists of immigrants from ships arriving in this country between 1878 and 1960. Also if you type in shipping lists or something similar in Google you get a lot of different sites come up with similar info. The National Archives also holds Passenger lists, look at www.nationalarchives.gov.uk