Strikes ….memories ….. and Miss Dannimac ….. more from the Manchester Jewish Museum

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single visit to a museum is never enough and must be followed by a second, third and fourth.

Window, 2026

Now, this is particularly true of the Manchester Jewish Museum which celebrates and records the history and culture of the Jewish community here and abroad.*

The Museum, 2025

I first discovered the museum soon after it opened in 1984 and followed that first visit with becoming a “Friend”, and have written extensively about it.**

But as so often happens other things get in the way, and I hadn’t been back for a very long time.

So, with a morning free I took the tram to Victoria and wandered up Cheetham Hill Road and was not disappointed.

I guess I was there for a couple of hours, learned a lot from the displays and enjoyed a series of conversations with some of the guides.

Of all the fascinating exhibits the one that drew me back was a page from The Waterproofer which was the official newspaper of the Waterproof Garment Worker’s Trade Union for July 1935 which recorded the end of 1934-5 strike.

The strike which was a response to the lowering piecework rates lasted nine months with the newspaper recording that the union would “not rest until every unscrupulous employer is dealt with and sweating abolished in the trade”. 

The Waterproofer, 1935

It is a story I was not over familiar with but it’s one I intend to follow up, and in that I may be helped by the memory maps of Jewish Manchester which are “a new digital resource where you can explore former sites of Jewish memory in the Cheetham Hill, Strangeways and Hightown areas of Manchester. Here you will find audio interviews, photographs, and information about more than 40 sites (we hope to include more in future) that consistently appear in people's recollections of these areas”.***

And then there is Miss Dannimac the “canvas Rain Coat … You’ve got to like Fashion to wear it”.  

Miss Dannimac. 2026

It was created by Ralph Levy who had “a vision of making rainwear not just practical but fashionable [and] new manufacturing techniques allowed Ralph to produce coats in lighter fabrics which were featured in Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar and modelled by fashion icons including Twiggy”.

And that I think is all for now, because while there is a great deal more in the museum, I think that should be for a visit.

Pictures; Thursday at the museum, 2026 & 2025 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Manchester Jewish Museum, https://www.manchesterjewishmuseum.com/

**Manchester Jewish Museum, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Manchester%20Jewish%20Museum

***Waterproof Garment Workers Trade Union, A Memory Map of Jewish Manchester, https://jewishmanchestermemorymap.org/?feature_type=point&id=320