This
article was originally published in the Journal of Glamorgan History,
Volume XXIX 1985, pages 59-73, and we are grateful to Professor Henriques
for it being reproduced here.
How many Jews were criminals? What sort of crimes did they commit?
Were Jewish immigrants a menace to the society in which they lived?
On the whole nineteenth-century anti-semitic stereotypes did not
follow this line. Jews had more of a reputation for getting round the law
than for breaking it. But this was not universal. For instance Dickens,
who was apt to get his plots from Government Blue Books, depicted
Fagin in Oliver Twist as the archetypal receiver of stolen goods,
organising gangs of young thieves. And it was generally believed that
this role was played by Jews in mid-nineteenth-century London. Wales
was not London, but this reputation could have followed the provincial
community as it developed there.
South Wales in the decades before World War I was a society in an
extraordinary state of flux. As the coalfields opened up the population
of the county of Glamorgan grew from about 318,000 in 1861 to
1,121,000 in 1911. Cardiff alone in the two decades 1861 to 1881
doubled its population from just under 40,000 to nearly
83,000.1
Although the rate of increase fell thereafter, by 1911 it had reached
182,000. Part of this increase was due to the enormous immigration of
Irish which began after the famine of 1846-8, while later in the century
came the influx of rural Welsh and English to the industrial valleys, and
after 1881 an increasing number of East European Jews. We do not
know the total of those who settled in South Wales with any precision.
The Jewish Year Books, depending on reports from various towns, are
fairly unreliable, and do not attempt such totals. The number of Jews
in South Wales has been variously estimated at 6,000 and 4,500 to
5,000 in 1914, the number in Cardiff at 1,250 (from the Year Book,
1904) or 1,500.2
Many were newly arrived, speaking a foreign
tongue, penniless, rootless and forced to scratch a living by peddling,
hawking or, if settled in one place, working as under-paid tailors,
seamstresses, cap-makers or coal miners. They were caught in sweated
occupations which must have made crime seem an easy option. But the
same was true of the populations of miners, port-workers or sailors
among whom they lived. So how did the records compare?
The opportunity to examine this question was afforded by the
existence of the very full materials retained in the Glamorgan Archive
in Cathays Park, Cardiff, together with a helpful staff of archivists
ready to show them to the enquirer. They include a long run of printed
calendars of the prisoners held in Cardiff and Swansea gaols (including
those bailed) who were tried at the Glamorgan Assizes and Quarter
Sessions. The Assizes were usually (although not invariably) held
quarterly, in Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter. Well known High
Court judges came down from London to preside. The Quarter Sessions
Courts were also held quarterly, usually before a bench of three
Justices of the Peace. Both courts were located, more or less quarterly,
in Swansea and Cardiff Town Halls, although after 1907 those at
Cardiff were generally held in the newly-built Cardiff Law Courts. The
Cardiff Quarter Sessions cases (their records were not in the Archive
but were discovered, after a search, in a cupboard in the new Crown
Courts at Penarth Road), once started in 1890, were heard before the
Recorder of Cardiff, Benjamin Williams Esq., Q.C. Until that date the
Assizes and Quarter Sessions Courts covered the trials of those charged
with offences committed in the whole of Glamorgan, from Swansea in
the West to Cardiff in the East, and Merthyr Tydfil in the North. For
a time the Assizes also dealt with cases from Brecon, Carmarthen and
Hereford, although these rural areas produced very few crimes of note.
After 1890 crimes committed in Cardiff were heard in the separate
Cardiff Quarter Sessions, although the most serious ones still went to
the Assizes. The latter dealt with the most important cases of murder,
rape, robbery, fraud, forgery, etc; Quarter Sessions dealt with the other
cases considered serious enough to require a jury. Below these two tiers
the Petty Sessions, courts of summary jurisdiction presided over by
J.P.s or a stipendiary magistrate, sat in subdivisions of the county and
heard the minor offences. The records of these, including the well
known Cardiff Police Court, are in the Glamorgan Archive. They are
mostly hand-written notes taken during the trials, and are sketchy,
illegible and far too voluminous for systematic coverage by a single
researcher. On the other hand, the prison calendars of cases before the
Assizes and Quarter Sessions are printed. By 1860 they had settled into
a uniform format giving the name of each prisoner, the place and nature
of the crime with which he was charged, the authority or person
bringing the charge, the verdict of the court, the sentence (if any), and
a list of his previous convictions. An index in the front of each calendar
gives the names, in alphabetical order, of the prisoners in each of the
two prisons, and on bail from them. In the later years each prisoner's
degree of education was assessed on a scale, and an analysis of the
different types of charge was given, along with the numbers charged.
Thus the printed calendars enable a reasonably systematic study to be
made of the more serious criminal cases heard in Glamorgan
throughout the period. This can be supplemented by some consideration
of the endless lists of drunks, disorderlies, prostitutes, beggars, minor
assaults and petty thieves who came before the Petty Sessions. Finally,
a great many of these cases were reported in more detail in the Western
Mail and other local papers, where further information can be found.
The numbers of those charged with crimes at the Quarter Sessions
and Assize Courts for Glamorgan in any one year fluctuate so much that
they mean very little. To help in identifying trends I have grouped them
into totals for six years at a time which fits in with the list of calendars
preserved (there is a gap between 1866 and 1873). The results can be
seen in Table 1.
It appears that the total number of criminal charges for the whole of
Glamorgan remained more or less constant between 1860 and 1890.
When Cardiff became a County Borough in 1890 the establishment of
the separate Cardiff Quarter Sessions to try crimes committed in the
borough increased the total by about 600 (why is not clear), and thereafter
it continued to rise, unevenly but surely. After 1908 the numbers
rose more rapidly, including those tried at Cardiff Quarter Sessions. In
1891 the Cardiff court had dealt with 98 criminal charges. These, of
course, included a fair proportion ending in a verdict of No True Bill,
or Not Guilty (which judging by the speed with which the "innocent"
person was often again before the court could merely mean exonerated
for lack of evidence). The calendars also did not include the results of
appeals to higher courts. But they did include the cases of many
habitual criminals who appeared before the judges time after time, and
thus inflated the statistics.
Glamorgan is not the whole of industrial South Wales. The eastern
industrial valleys, which also contained Jewish communities such as
those of Newport and Tredegar as well as groups of families in the
smaller mining villages, lay in the county of Monmouth. The Monmouth Quarter Sessions were held at Usk, and their calendars are now
kept in the Gwent County Hall archive at Cwmbran. Unfortunately
many of the earlier records have been lost, and there are many gaps.
Even in 1903 only two out of the four Quarter Sessions calendars
remain, although from 1904 onward the records are complete. Gwent
also has some petty sessions books from the various Monmouthshire
divisions, although with much less detail than those for Glamorgan.
The Monmouth Assizes which were held three times a year in
Monmouth town were part of the Oxford Assize Circuit. Their
calendars form part of the Oxford Assize Circuit minute books held at
the Public Record Office in Chancery Lane, London. Putting together
the Glamorgan Assize and Quarter Sessions calendars, the Monmouth
Quarter Sessions records and the Oxford Assize records for Monmouth
we have a reasonably comprehensive record (so far as it has survived)
of the more serious criminal proceedings in South Wales, at least
during the period 1903-1908. Only the westernmost industrial towns and
villages such as Llanelli, which contained a Jewish community of about
70, remain outside. The population numbers were small, and it can be
presumed that the proportions and nature of the criminal elements were
much the same as in the rest of the South Wales industrial area.
To this, however, a caution must be added. Although the cases on record
increased rapidly towards the end of the nineteenth century and became
very numerous after the turn of the century, they were still numbered
by hundreds. In fact the numbers were paltry in proportion to those of
the exploding population. They cannot represent more than the tip of the
iceberg, i.e. the criminals caught and brought to justice (including those
found Not Guilty), by no means all the crimes committed. They must
reflect the degree of efficiency of the police as much as the extent of crime.
But what of the Jews? Here again it is necessary to start with a
caution. The Jews accused of crime present big problems of identification.
Only a few can be found among the known, locally settled families
whose names appear on synagogue subscription lists, marriage
registers or the burial books of Jewish cemeteries. Many were
wanderers or recent immigrants in South Wales. With the more assimilated,
including those appearing in census reports and trade directories,
the Names Game, well known to Anglo-Jewish historians, is even more
difficult in Wales than east of the Severn. Among the Welsh offenders
we encounter many members of those working class families who, in
the early nineteenth century, took biblical names. Abraham, Isaac,
Jacob, Moses, Joseph, Samuel, even Emanuel are as likely to be Welsh
as Jewish, though an 's' on the end, e.g. Abrahams, Isaacs, Samuels,
does entail a likelihood of Jewish origin. Then there are many non-
biblical names common to Jews and non-Jews, e.g. Harris, Marks,
Lyons, Phillips. Some immigrants hastened to change foreign-sounding
names into a more English idiom. Schwarz became Black, Moses
became Moss or Morris. Many a Levy in Wales turned Lewis. Statistically it
is even possible that Welsh criminals wrongly identified as
Jewish by Old Testament names are partly cancelled out by Jewish
criminals overlooked under English or Welsh names. Despite the
formulation of statistical tables, and however regrettable it may be, the
results of a study of this kind can never produce more than approximations or
even guestimates of the actual situation. All the same, such
a study is not without interest.
In Table 1 an attempt has been made to trace the statistical growth
of criminal cases in Glamorgan and to work out the number and
proportion of Jewish cases among them. Tables 2, 3 and 4 cover the
shorter, if peak period of 1903-08, adding Monmouth (always
recollecting that only two out of four of the Monmouth Quarter
Sessions calendars for the year 1903 remain).
Table 2 shows the
percentage of Jews tried to the total tried,
Table 3 gives the total tried to the
total population, and Table 4 gives an estimate of the percentage of Jews tried
to the Jewish population. Another disadvantage on the Jewish side is
that the numbers were so small that a variant of even one or two in the
figures produces a large variation in the percentages. Allowing for this
the results are palpable if not dramatic. We find a very slightly higher
proportion of Jews tried for crimes to the Jewish population of South
Wales than of total numbers tried to the total population: 0.72% or
0.6% to 0.26%. The proportion of Jews tried for crimes to the total
tried for crimes is 1.18% to 0.26%. However, these numbers and
proportions are so low that by no stretch of the imagination could the
Jewish immigration be seen to produce a large increase in the crime rate
or a crime wave in South Wales. Indeed, if the numbers of Jewish
names in the calendars are compared with the numbers of Irish names
(which as late as the Glamorgan Autumn Assizes for 1908 constituted
over 14% of those on the lists) it will be apparent which of these
influxes of penniless refugees provided the larger share of criminals.
And this impression is reinforced by the long lists of drunk and
disorderly Irishmen and women who appeared before the Cardiff Police
Court.
What sort of crimes did Jewish criminals commit? Were there any
specifically "Jewish" crimes which marked their perpetrators out from
the rest of the criminal fraternity? Before considering this question it
would be useful to look at the nature of crime in South Wales.
The calendars suggest that the majority of the more serious crimes
committed were crimes against property. In every list of cases both at
Glamorgan Assizes and Quarter Sessions the greatest number of
charges were for larceny (theft). These were often divided into simple
larceny, larceny from the person i.e. picking pockets, bailee larceny,
i.e. the theft or conversion of property being held in trust, usually in
a case of bankruptcy, and sometimes larceny by a servant or a post
office worker. To these were added housebreaking, shopbreaking,
warehouse and counting house breaking, all of which became burglary
if done at night. Secondary to these was the receiving of stolen goods.
Then there were various kinds of frauds and the obtaining of money or
goods by false pretences. The most serious-forgery and counterfeit
coining-generally went to Assizes. A combination of offences against
property and against the person was the frequent crime of robbery with
violence. The serious cases usually went to Assizes, along with murder,
manslaughter, rape, malicious wounding, and the infliction of grievous
bodily harm. Monmouth Assizes in particular had numerous cases of
rape and carnal knowledge of children under the age of sixteen. The
less serious cases of wounding, attempted rape or indecent assault, and
malicious damage to property valued at more than £5 went to Quarter
Sessions. There was an overlap between the cases heard in the two
courts, and the principles of division are not altogether clear. Bigamy,
a surprisingly common offence, and probably often an attempt to
acquire property, was usually heard at Assizes. So was homosexuality,
usually described as "gross indecency" and severely punished with
imprisonment. Pimps, described along with persistent beggars as
"incorrigible rogues", were sent to prison for several months at
Quarter Sessions, while their flocks of prostitutes were sentenced to
shorter periods at Petty Sessions.
The separation of Cardiff Quarter Sessions from Glamorgan Sessions
from 1890 (recollecting that the graver cases still went to Glamorgan
Assizes) highlights some differences between the crimes typical of
Cardiff and the ports and those typical of the valleys. Each had special
circumstances likely to augment its crime figures. Cardiff, a big docks
and shopping centre, was haunted by prostitutes, and the arrival of
merchant ships was reflected in the calendars by foreign names, usually
opposite charges of stabbing or malicious wounding.
Yet Merthyr Tydfil and the towns of what is now called the Rhondda,
but was always referred to under the names of its two parishes,
Ystradyfodwg and Llanwonno, were markedly more prone to violence.
The Glamorgan Midsummer Quarter Sessions of June 1899 heard 10
charges of larceny, 2 of shopbreaking, 2 of false pretences, 1 of
burglary, 7 of wounding, 1 of assault, 1 grievous bodily harm, 1 of
attempted rape, 2 of indecent assault and 1 attempted suicide. The
Cardiff County Borough Sessions in June 1899 heard 21 cases of
larceny, 6 of housebreaking, 2 of shopbreaking, 1 of burglary, 3 of
false pretences, 1 of wounding, 1 of attempted suicide and 1 of showing
indecent pictures. Earlier in the nineteenth century the difference was
more marked, the cases of violence in the valleys sometimes exceeding
those of larceny. The valleys also produced more rural cases, of sheep
and fowl stealing, poaching and occasional rick-burning. However, the
differences should not be exaggerated. In both areas gangs of young
toughs (in Merthyr Tydfil usually colliers) raided any place where
food, clothes or valuables were kept. Railway stores and depots
(especially coal bunkers) were popular targets. Violent industrial action
occurred in Cardiff where at the Easter Quarter Sessions, 1891, four
seamen including Havelock Ellis, Secretary of the Seamen's Union, got
six weeks for rioting, while four more got two weeks. In the Easter
Assizes the same year a bus and a tram driver were sentenced to two
months each for unlawful wounding and damage to tramcars during a
riotous assembly of 70 or more. In 1910 and 1911, as we know,
industrial violence, rioting and looting moved to the valleys.
How did the Jewish criminals appear in these records? Both from the
stereotypes and from the insecurity and social isolation in which many
immigrants and children of immigrants lived, Jewish crime could be
expected to follow certain lines. One would expect to find receivers of
stolen goods rather than thieves, frauds, forgers and obtainers of goods
by false pretences rather than robbers and burglars, fraudulent
merchants and petty pilferers among the numerous hawkers and
pedlars. And of course they are to be found.
As far back as 1857 John da Costa (usually a Sephardi name), pedlar,
was accused in Quarter Sessions of endeavouring to obtain by false
pretences one guinea from Elizabeth Rice and one guinea from David
Phillips, at Neath. Unfortunately the nature of the false pretences is not
revealed, but the prisoner was discharged on sureties. In the
Michaelmas Quarter Sessions, October 1875, Kate Isaac, 17,
dressmaker, possibly but not certainly a Jewess, pleaded guilty to
obtaining 11(?) pounds of butter by false pretences. She was sentenced to
14 days' hard labour and five years in a reformatory. Poor girl; the
young were far more heavily punished under the reformatory system
than adults. Judging from many police records they often emerged only
fit for a life of crime. In Quarter Sessions April 1879 Henry Levy, 34,
commission agent, was convicted of receiving stolen oxide of cobalt at
Landore and sentenced to eighteen months' hard labour in Swansea
gaol. In 1883 Hyman Freedman, a Swansea pawnbroker, was sent by
the Assize Court to penal servitude for five years for receiving stolen
watches. At the Winter Assize of February 1881, Jean Goldman, 42,
commission agent, was charged with fraudulently concealing goods,
shares and mortgages at bankruptcy proceedings, to defraud his
creditors, but he was found Not Guilty and discharged. This class of
case, in which bankrupts were suspected of concealing their assets, or
trading on credit while still undischarged, was not uncommon. In
December 1889 William David Israel, 25, hawker, was convicted in
Quarter Sessions of obtaining from Nathan Ash one clock, three chairs
and an iron stand, the property of John Jacob in Llanwonno. Having
two previous convictions for horse stealing he went to Cardiff gaol for
twelve months, but was soon convicted of false pretences again. In
1893 Henry Phillips, dealer, forged a receipt for money, and, it being
his eighth conviction for forgery, was sentenced to penal servitude for
four years. In 1904 Jacob Bakalov, 23, was sentenced to six months for
embezzling small sums from his employer, Joseph Bogod. In October
1914 Joseph Cohen, draper of Tredegar, received four months at
Monmouth Quarter Sessions for selling, not for the first time, his own
mineral water in the bottles of Thomas and Evans of Porth.
And so it goes on. Occasionally a Jew was found acting as receiver
in a mixed gang. In 1908 Benjamin Levinsohn, 19, pawnbroker's
assistant, joined with D. Lloyd, haulier, William Bryant, collier, and
Price Lloyd, traveller, in breaking and entering the house of Jacob
Kransky in Llanwonno, and stealing clothes. Levinsohn and Price
Lloyd got twelve months each for receiving the stolen goods. It will be
observed that Jews were often the victims of Jewish criminals, not least
in breaking and entering cases. The criminal probably knew where the
Jewish businesses were, and also how to get into them.
Despite these examples there is no evidence that Jews acted as
receivers or forgers or embezzlers or obtained money by false
pretences any more often than their non-Jewish associates. There was
a steady trickle of receivers who acted as the necessary disposers of
stolen goods, and the Jews were a small minority among them. There
is no evidence that they organised permanent gangs. The same is true
of fraud, embezzlement and false pretences, all of them common
crimes. On the other hand, there is plenty of evidence of Jews indulging
in simple larceny and house or shopbreaking. Perhaps it is hardly fair
to count Louis Slivensky, 10, who with other children and two adults
was convicted at Cardiff Quarter Sessions for July 1900 of stealing coal
from the Taff Vale Railway Company. The children got one day and
the adults two months. As early as 1861 Moses Levy, 24, cab-driver,
was convicted with two others of breaking and entering the house of
Hezekiah Hughes, Llanwonno, and stealing £4, a silver teaspoon and
a sugar tongs, and sentenced to two years in Swansea gaol. He was
obviously one of a gang. In an unusual case, William Bernstein, 51,
fitter, was bound over at Cardiff Quarter Sessions, Michaelmas 1909,
for breaking and entering a warehouse of the Cardiff Dry Dock
Company and stealing a stop valve cover, a spindle and nut, and other
objects peculiar to his trade. In the 1890s there were one or two Jewish
horse stealers, but by 1899 Samuel Gottleib, 18, watchmaker of
Cardiff, was stealing bicycles. Cases of stealing and of breaking and
entering can be multiplied ad nauseum. They reinforce the impression
that in crimes against property Jewish criminals were a part, not
especially conspicuous, of the local criminal scene. This was true also
of the considerable proportion of them who were pedlars, hawkers or
travellers. There were many Irish pedlars and hawkers too, some
indulging in dishonest activities.
Jews are not noted for sexual crimes, but there were a few Jewish
names among those charged with this type of offence. In 1862 David
Solomon, 56, was found not guilty of unlawfully knowing a girl aged
10, but in 1894 Morris Jacobs, 36, tailor, received seven years' penal
servitude, a very stiff sentence, at the Assizes in Swansea for a similar
offence, as did Hyman Rosenthal at Monmouth Assizes in 1904. When
in 1872 Samuel Marks, tobacconist, was charged with indecently
assaulting a girl under thirteen she said he asked for a kiss and then
behaved indecently. He said he just asked for a kiss. The case was
dismissed for lack of evidence, but, according to the Western Mail the
magistrate said to the defendant, "Get out, you nasty old
beast."3 An
unusual case occurred in 1888 when Simon Freedman, 20, an employee
of Isaac Kantorovich, was accused of taking Rachel Kantorovich aged
13 out of the custody of her mother. Freedman claimed that he was
rescuing the girl from her parents who beat her, and also claimed that
her father had offered to sell her to him if he waited a
year.4
Although the girl would not support him in the witness box he was
found not guilty. When the long lists of unlawful knowing, and even
more the gang rapes which appeared before the Assize courts are
considered, the Jewish record in this field was not a disgraceful one.
Nor were Jewish offenders often violent, although there were
exceptions. There were one or two cases of robbery with violence,
usually as part of a gang. In 1854 Moses Lewis (who may or may not
have been Jewish) was sentenced at the Assizes to one week for striking
Jean Huet on the head with a stone. In 1880 two young pawnbrokers,
Jacob and Nathan Tanchan, 15 and 18, were accused of two assaults
in one week. The older was fined twenty shillings with costs. Next year
they were again in trouble, Jacob being fined at Bridgend Police Court
for damaging a pair of boots pledged with him and then charging more
than the legal interest upon them. The following month both were fined
for trying to collect a debt, which the debtor had refused to pay on the
grounds that the interest was exorbitant, by entering his house, with the
bailiff, through a window which they
damaged.5
If not often violent Jews were sometimes caught up in militant
industrial action. In 1892 Henry Hyman, 30, a painter, was found
guilty with five others of intimidating three workmen at Cadoxton near
Barry to make them abstain from working for their employer. The
Tanchan brothers' debt-collecting activities had attracted a mob, with
evident implications for arousing anti-semitism. The Cadoxton case
suggests that in industrial action as in most crimes, Jews were merely
assimilated into the activities and mores of their non-Jewish neighbours.
The South Wales towns and valleys were always haunted by
professional thieves and petty criminals who preyed on society. At any
one time one or two of these could be of Jewish origin. In the 1860s
Merthyr Tydfil was pestered by a pickpocket, Leah Lewis. She appears
first in the Glamorgan Michaelmas Quarter Sessions for 1864. She was
found not guilty of stealing money and a scarf, but in January 1865 she
was convicted of stealing a watch from one William Coleman. In
Michaelmas 1866 she was sentenced to two years' hard labour for
stealing a purse. Between 1879 and 1885 Henry Singer, a bagman or
rag collector, evidently with a horse and cart, stole 30lbs of iron and
I 00lbs of coal at Maesteg, for which he served five months in gaol. He
was lucky to be cleared in 1882 of robbing a warehouse of half a ton
of rags.
In the 1890s William David Israel, hawker (already mentioned),
haunted the Valleys stealing watches and obtaining articles of clothing
by false pretences. But the principal pest in the last two decades of the
nineteenth century was Joseph Abraham (or Abrahams). This man,
plainly one of nature's inadequates, started his career at the age of
sixteen, stealing a pair of boots, for which he received twelve strokes
of the birch and fourteen days from Chepstow Petty Sessions. Between
1881 and 1908 he accumulated eighteen convictions in various South
Wales towns, almost all for petty thefts of clothing, as well as twenty-three
summary convictions for drunkenness and assaults. Yet Abraham
was in no way exceptional. The calendars are full of similar cases with
similar records, most of them beginning in early youth with a birching
and/or sentence to reformatory custody for stealing apples or boots or
some small sum of money. Any advocate of the birch or of reform
schools (at least as they were conducted in the late nineteenth century)
has only to look at these cases to experience doubts about the efficacy
of draconian punishment in preventing crime. Moreover, as the
nineteenth century wore on the proportion of criminals with long police
records rose steadily until the single or occasional offence appeared to
be exceptional. Once again the persistent criminal of Jewish origin,
whether with an unconquerable addiction to pairs of boots and
overcoats or to watches and jewellery was part of a kind of criminal
fraternity or subculture. This was no "respectable" mafia, but a sad
throng of recidivists. The persistent petty thief had probably lost his (or
her) religious and communal attachment, just as the more frequent Irish
criminal had abandoned the discipline of his church. In all the
circumstances, and especially in view of the large numbers exposed to
the temptations of the hawkers' and pedlars' trades, it is perhaps
surprising that there were not more.
In these sorry records of crime and punishment a few special
categories of criminal stand out. One is the exceptional offender in an
otherwise known and prosperous family. The Tanchan brothers have
already been mentioned. In 1861 Nelson Marks, 26, watchmaker (not
the convert who became a water-rate collector, but probably a son of
Samuel Marks the dyer who had a shop in St. Mary Street, Cardiff),
was sentenced to two years in Swansea gaol for embezzling 6s. 6d.
from his master, Bryant Briggs. It was a harsh sentence, but judges
were hard on servants who were felt to have betrayed their trust. Four
years later he was charged with a similar offence (evidently Briggs had
taken him back) but found Not Guilty. Albert Heitzman, from a well
established immigrant family of watchmakers, became a forger and was
found in possession of a die. But the family may have been German but
not Jewish.
Another and even rarer category is the frankly dotty, always on the
edge of prison or asylum, but not certifiable under the M'Naghten
rules.6
Hyam Jacobs, an elderly jeweller, was in repeated trouble with
the law.7
He was accused of passing false cheques, got two months for
lashing out with a stick at some boys who were teasing him, thought
he was being spied on, and was apt to commit assaults when drunk. He
even tried to pay for a drink with a pork sausage (which he wouldn't
eat himself), and having run out of money, told the barman that he
"wanted to pawn his face". "That", said the judge, "is a primitive
source of barter introduced by your
ancestors".8
Anti-semitic remarks
were not uncommon in the lower courts.
Far the most important special category is that of the
pawnbrokers.9
Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Jews had
a virtual monopoly of pawnbroking in South Wales. They formed an
economically important and indeed wealthy group of considerable
social influence. But they probably became more entangled in criminal
and civil law than any other category of people in South Wales. If any
businessman was beset with temptation to become a receiver of stolen
goods it was the pawnbroker. And occasionally he yielded. Greenbone
Jacobs, pawnbroker of Swansea, was accused in 1858 Midsummer
Quarter Sessions of receiving stolen rope; but the case was dismissed.
Hyman Freedman who in 1883 was sentenced to five years' penal
servitude for receiving three gold watches has already been mentioned.
Most accusations of receiving, however, concerned minor articles of
second-hand clothing and cheap jewellery. It was customary for petty
thieves immediately to take their loot to a pawnshop where they could
get hard cash. When Mary Perryman in 1883 was charged with
extensive thefts from her employers a number of Cardiff pawnbrokers
were cautioned by the court for accepting articles without question.
They included Fanny Freydburg of System Street, Morris Fine of
Clifton Street, Abraham Shibko and Montague Barnett, all well
established traders. The pawnbrokers soon became alert to the dangers
to themselves and their businesses from the reputation of receiving,
especially as thieves frequently stole from one pawnshop and tried to
pledge the goods at another, or even the same one. Although a
broker-or more probably his inexperienced assistant-sometimes
accepted a stolen pledge, more often, as soon as his suspicion was
aroused he sent for the police. Many a thief was caught in this way.
Otherwise the pawnbrokers were brought to court-usually to Petty
Sessions-either for causing an obstruction on the pavement, or for
accepting a pledge from a child under thirteen, forbidden by the Act
of 1872. This Act was a trap since it was very difficult to know whether
a child was thirteen or not, and parents sent their children along with
their pledges. Nor could the pawnbrokers expect much sympathy from
the magistrates, who punished them if they swindled a client but were
apt to tell them it was their own fault if they were swindled by a
customer.
This leads to the most striking feature emerging from this survey -
that Jews were far more often the victims than the perpetrators of
crime.
The impression gained from the records is that for one theft or
robbery committed by a Jew there were four or five committed against
one. Jewish businesses, both in Cardiff and in the valleys, were often
of the sort most likely to attract shopbreakers. Pawnbroking was
usually associated with the sale of jewellery or clothing or both.
Pawnbrokers' shops and houses as well as ordinary jewellers and
clothing stores were raided again and again. Sometimes a petty thief
like Joseph Abraham filched single articles, and sometimes the shop
was cleaned out by professional thieves. Coleman Follick of 40 and 41
Bridge Street, Cardiff, was raided at least nine times between 1890 and
1906. Louis Barnett, a wealthy man with six pawnshops in Cardiff and
other towns, suffered depredations on at least seven separate occasions,
and there were other records not far short. Of course non-Jewish
businesses suffered too. In 1902 William Hamill, 27, engineer, was
convicted of stealing three gold pins from H. B. Crouch the goldsmiths,
as well as two pairs of gold sleeve links from Julius Hettich,
pawnbroker. Some of these robberies were very serious. In 1914
Charles Frederick Lamb, 31, described as labourer, but from his long
record a professional criminal, broke and entered the shop of Abraham
Shibko, stealing 50 gold watches, 18 watch chains, 25 rings and other
articles. Twenty-seven years earlier G. A. Phillips had suffered a
similar raid on his jewellery shop in the Wyndham Arcade, which
helped to account for his bankruptcy the following year.
This survey of the court calendars produces no very dramatic
conclusion. The impression is left of a rather lawless society, in which
the work of the law courts was only part of the story. On this stage
Jewish criminals played a part, but not a specially prominent one. Nor
did they monopolise any special category of crime. Here, as in more
constructive activities, they quickly assimilated to the society in which
they lived and moved.
The Author: Professor Henriques was a member of the History Department
at University College, Cardiff, for twenty years. She has published
several books, as well as many articles. Following her retirement she devoted her time
to research into the history of the Jewish communities of South Wales and in
1993 published "The Jews of South Wales" (of which a later edition was published
in 2013).
