The Rural Activism of the Anglo-Jewish Elites c.1850-1950: Stories of Place and Privilege

• In Event: Jews with Money: transatlantic perspectives on class, family, power and vulnerability

Abstract

The study of Jewish philanthropy in late nineteenth century Britain has largely been centred on the East End of London, and attempts to feed, clothe, educate, regulate, sanitise and forcibly anglicise, migrants from Eastern Europe. Far less work has been conducted into the activities of the so-called Cousinhood- the network of closely connected Anglo-Jewish banking families- in rural settings, where these families also made their home for part of the year and where they participated in the local community. This group has often been treated either in quaint and anecdotal terms, or as a reactionary oligarchy inevitably overwhelmed by twentieth-century politics. Reinserting this rural sphere of activity points to modes of philanthropy that cannot be reduced to mere paternalism, or the logics of social control; it also casts fresh light on the long term ethos of communal service that was cultivated and preserved within these families across several generations, and which was expressed in a proliferation of local institutions and memorials.

This paper revisits the topic of Cousinhood philanthropy by considering the different scales at which it operated, and the intersection between the regional, national and international commitments of the Anglo-Jewish elite. It underlines the hybrid social identities of a group that did not just move between town and country, but which also translated elements of the former into the latter- such as Marcus Samuel, whose campaign to become Lord Mayor of London in 1902 was eagerly celebrated by the tenants upon his Kentish estate, the Mote. The Samuels were by no means unique: they followed a series of successful metropolitan families who also became benefactors of small, predominantly Christian and agricultural, communities. So important was this kind of local integration that Fanny Samuels, Lady Bearsted, Marcus’ wife, instructed their children to uphold it in her will.

By reconsidering philanthropy in a rural key, as practiced by Jewish banking and business families like the Goldsmids, the Franklins, the Montagus , the Faudel-Phillips and the Samuels, this paper views country living not just as a refuge from the metropolis, but as an important site for shaping elite values and for practicing Jewish politics in its own right- a place in which the local and the global intersected in unexpected ways.

An offshoot from a larger investigation of Cousinhood philanthropy with Jaclyn Granick, the paper emerges from the AHRC-funded project “Jewish country houses – objects, networks, people”.

Author

• Tom Stammers, Reader in Art and Cultural History, Courtauld Institute of London