David Saul Rodrigues (1752-1800) & Reina Da Costa Andrade (c.1750-1794)
David, the son of Saul (de Isaac) Rodrigues (1730-1780) and Sipora (de Samuel) Abendana (1730-1811), was born on 5 October 1753. His parents had married at the Bevis Marks synagogue on 5 January 1752 but had been born in the Netherlands were their families had settled after they had left Portugal. The Spanish Alhambra Decree of 1492 and Portuguese Decree of 1497 had forced the expulsion or conversion of Jews in the Iberian peninsular (known as Sephardic Jews) to Christianity. Those who converted adopted surnames, hence “Rodrigues”, and although the family kept the name (for example it was used in David’s will dated 1800), it eventually was dropped by later generations. Over the C16th to C17th, many of these “Conversos” migrated to areas where they could revert to Judaism, such as the Netherlands and London.
Reina was the daughter of David Haim da Costa de Andrade (died 1766) and Judith de Jacob de Leon. Her parents were part of the Sephardic community in east London and had married at the Bevis Marks synagogue on 8 January 1748. The family of her father, Da Costa Andrade, can be traced back to Portugal which they left in the 1650s. Her mother, Judith, was the daughter of Jacob de Leon and Rachel, whose Jewish marriage is recorded as having taken place in Bevis Marks on 24 September 1727. They were described as “Vindos de Portugal” (refugees from Portugal who had possibly been married in church there and were now free to remarry according to the Jewish rite).
David Saul Rodrigues married Reina Da Costa Andrade at the Bevis Marks synagogue on 18 June 1777.
David worked as a butcher and the family lived at Old Gravel Lane, off Houndsditch to the east of Aldgate. (A part of Old Gravel Lane was demolished c1800 for the erection of the extensive warehouses of the East India Company now occupied by the Port of London Authority.)
David Rodrigues, a butcher, was listed in the records of the Freemson’s Hiram’s Lodge of Swan Lane, Minories, in 1781.
Later accounts indicated that David had repudiated Judaism and raised his children as Christians, although they were not baptised at birth.
Reyna died on 12 July 1794 and was buried at the Nuevo Sephardic cemetery at Mile End.
David died in February 1800. His will described him as “David Saul Rodrigues of the parish of St Georges in the East, butcher” was written at Old Gravel Lane 20 February 1800. The will directed his “body be interred in a direct manner in the Portuguese Jews burying ground Mile End” .
The will mentioned five sons Abraham, Saul, Moses, Benjamin, and Jonathon. His young daughters, Ziporale (Tiporale) and Reyna (who had been born in June 1794, shortly before her mother’s death) ,were singled out as they were infant girls and so required a greater proportion of his bequests, namely “the profits and property arising from [his] leasehold dwelling situated in No 85 Wapping Wall in the parish of Shadwell”. £10 was left to his son Jonathan to “set him up in business”; the remainder of his property was to be divided between his children Abraham, Saul, Moses, Benjamin, Tiporale and Reyna. His executors were his brother Abraham Rodrigues and brother-in-law Benjamin, Da Costa Andrade.
The Nuevo Sephardic cemetery at Mile End dates from 1733, and was established after the old (Velho) cemetery nearby had become full. The cemetery closed in 1875. In 1973, as part of the Queen Mary College expansion, over 5,000 burials at the Nuevo Sephardic cemetery were removed and mostly reburied in three mass graves at Brentwood.