Over two million Jews emigrated from Russia and Eastern Europe at the end of the 19th century. Most of them went to America, but a significant number ended up in London, where, like the Huguenots before them and the Pakistani and Bangladeshi immigrant communities later, they gravitated towards the East End. The question of what to do about this large, poor and foreign population was one which occupied Parliament as well as the established Jewish bourgeoisie, and a classically Victorian solution was found: philanthropy, but philanthropy with a guaranteed return for the philanthropists. The Four Percent Industrial Dwelling Company, set up by Baron Rothschild, set out to replace the lodging houses of the Whitechapel ‘rookeries’ with ‘model dwellings’ – tenements designed to house large numbers of the urban poor in relative health and comfort, and which would generate a four percent return on the shareholders’ investment.
Posted on: Mon, 18 Aug 2014 07:36:19 +0000
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