“Like Beasts of the Field”: The Poverty and Sanitary Conditions of the East End’s Jewish Immigrants in the Context of British Imperial and Racial Discourse

Karolina Sierzputowska

“Like Beasts of the Field”: The Poverty and Sanitary Conditions of the East End’s Jewish Immigrants in the Context of British Imperial and Racial Discourse

Data publikacji: 19.09.2023

Scripta Judaica Cracoviensia, 2021, Volume 19, s. 29 - 42

https://doi.org/10.4467/20843925SJ.21.003.16412

Autorzy

Pobierz pełny tekst

PDF

drukuj

Tytuły

“Like Beasts of the Field”: The Poverty and Sanitary Conditions of the East End’s Jewish Immigrants in the Context of British Imperial and Racial Discourse

Abstrakt

The influx of Eastern European Jewry into London stirred controversy within British society and within the Anglo-Jewish community. Newly arrived Jews became part of the debate over the “alien problem,” which resulted in the passing of the Aliens Act in 1905. This paper will examine the disputes over the poverty and “dirtiness” of Jewish immigrants in the context of the British imperial and racial discourse. The aim is to show how the controversy over the poverty of immigrants and the sanitary conditions of the Jewish quarter exposed deeper social anxiety over the position of the British Empire. The paper will focus on accusations against Jews from Eastern Europe of impoverishing and polluting the “heart of the Empire,” thus contributing to the collapse of the ideals of British progress and superiority.

Słowa kluczowe

Jewish immigrants, London Jewry, East End, imperialism, race discourse, poverty, dirtiness

Bibliografia

Pobierz bibliografię

Printed sources

Besant, W. (1901), East London, New York.

Booth, Ch. (1889), Life and Labour of the People in London, London.

Gelberg, S. (1902), Jewish London, in: Living London, London.

Gidney, W.T. (1900), At Home and Abroad: A Description of English and Continental Mission of the London Society for Promoting Christianity amongst the Jews, London.

Gidney, W.T. (1908), The History of the London Society for Promoting Christianity amongst the Jews, from 1809 to 1908, London.

Mearns, A. (1883), The Bitter Cry of Outcast London: An Inquiry Into the Conditions of Abject Poor, London.

Russel, Ch., Lewis, H.S. (1900), Jew in London: A Study of Racial Character and Present-Day Conditions, London.

Sims, G. (1889), How the Poor Live, London.

Press

Illustrated London News 1892.

Jewish Chronicle 1889, 1893.

Morning Post 1888.

Pall Mall Gazette 1888.

St. James’s Gazette 1887, 1891.

The Daily Telegraph 1902.

The Graphic 1889.

Secondary literature

Allen, M. (2008), Cleansing the City: Sanitary Geographies in Victorian London, Athens, OH.

Bar-Yosef, E., Valman, N. (2009), ‘The Jew’ in Late-Victorian and Edwardian Culture: Between the East End and East Africa, New York.

Cesarani, D. (1994), The Jewish Chronicle and Anglo-Jewry, 1841–1991, New York.

Cheyette, B. (1993), Constructions of ‘the Jew’ in English Literature and Society: Racial representations, 1875–1945, Cambridge.

Clark, M. (2009), Albion and Jerusalem: The Anglo-Jewish Community in the Post-Emancipation Era, 1858–1887, New York.

Dekel-Chen, J. et al. (eds.) (2010), Anti-Jewish Violence: Rethinking the Pogrom in Eastern European History, Bloomington.

Dennis, R. (2000), Modern London, in: M. Dauton (ed.), The Cambridge History of Britain, 1840–1950, Cambridge: 95–132.

Endelman, T. (2002), The Jews of Britain, 1656 to 2000, Berkeley–Los Angeles–London.

Ewence, H. (2019), The Alien Jew in British Imagination, 1881–1905, Chester.

Feldman, D. (2011), Jews in the East End, Jews in the Polity, ‘The Jew’, in: 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century, no. 13: 1–25.

Gartner, L. (1973), The Jewish Immigrant in England, London.

Glover, D. (2012), Literature, Immigration, and Diaspora in Fin-de-Siècle England: A Cultural History of the 1905 Alien Act, Cambridge.

Hobsbawm, E. (1987), The Age of Empire, London–New York.

Klier, J. (2011), Russians, Jews, and the Pogroms of 1881–1882, Cambridge.

Klier, J., Lambroza, S. (eds.) (1992), Pogroms: Anti-Jewish Violence in Modern Russian History, Cambridge.

Kushner, T. (2005), Racialization and “White European” Immigration to Britain, in: K. Murji, J. Solomos (eds.), Racialization. Studies in Theory and Practice, New York: 207–226.

Lipman, V. (1954), Social History of the Jews in England, 1850–1950, London.

Marriot, J. (2011), Beyond the Tower: A History of East London, New Haven–London.

Newland, P. (2008), The Cultural Construction of London’s East End: Urban Iconography, Modernity and the Spatialisation of Englishness, New York.

Polonsky, A. (2010), The Jews in Poland and Russia, vol. 1, Oxford–Portland.

Pooley, C. (2000), Patterns and the Ground: Urban Form, Residential Structure and the Social Construction of Space, in: M. Dauton (ed.), The Cambridge History of Britain, 1840–1950, Cambridge: 429–466.

Schülting, S. (2016), Dirt in Victorian Literature and Culture: Writing Materiality, New York.

Tananbaum, S. (2014), Jewish Immigrants in London, 1880–1939, London–New York.

Ward, D. (1984), The Progressives and the Urban Question: British and American Responses to the Inner City Slums 1880–1920, Transaction of the Institute of British Geographer 9(3): 299–314.

Informacje

Informacje: Scripta Judaica Cracoviensia, 2021, Volume 19, s. 29 - 42

DOI: https://doi.org/10.4467/20843925SJ.21.003.16412

Typ artykułu: Oryginalny artykuł naukowy

Tytuły:

Polski:

“Like Beasts of the Field”: The Poverty and Sanitary Conditions of the East End’s Jewish Immigrants in the Context of British Imperial and Racial Discourse

Angielski:

“Like Beasts of the Field”: The Poverty and Sanitary Conditions of the East End’s Jewish Immigrants in the Context of British Imperial and Racial Discourse

Autorzy

Karolina Sierzputowska

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1047-4272

Uniwersytet Jagielloński w Krakowie, Polska, ul. Gołębia 24, 31-007 Kraków

Publikacja: 19.09.2023

Status artykułu: Otwarte

Licencja: CC BY

Udział procentowy autorów:

Karolina Sierzputowska (Autor) - 100%

Korekty artykułu:

Języki publikacji:

Angielski

Liczba wyświetleń: 510

Liczba pobrań: 452

<p> “Like Beasts of the Field”: The Poverty and Sanitary Conditions of the East End’s Jewish Immigrants in the Context of British Imperial and Racial Discourse</p>

Pobierz xml