Anglo-Jewry AND The Jewish International Traffic in Prostitution, 1885-1914.

Anglo-Jewry and the Jewish International Traffic in Prostitution, 1885-1914
Author(s): Lloyd P. Gartner

Source: AJS Review, Vol. 7 (1982), pp. 129-178
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for Jewish Studies
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ANGLO-JEWRY
AND THE JEWISHINTERNATIONAL
TRAFFIC IN PROSTITUTION,
1885-1914
by
LLOYD P. GARTNER
Our tale opens in some little town in the Pale of Settlement between the
1880s and World War I. A well-spoken, well-dressed young man appears
and courts an attractive girl of a family belonging to the great majority of
the Jewish townspeople-that is, impoverished and burdened with many
children. The unknown suitor offers charm and gifts, and speaks knowingly
of the great places he has seen and where he has a good business-Paris,
Johannesburg, London, or New York. Will the girl accompany him west-
ward and become his bride once they reach their destination? He does not
Abbreviations:
AZJ: Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums(Leipzig)

JAPG&W:Jewish Association for the Protection of Girls and Women
JC: Jewish Chronicle(London)
JLA:Jewish Ladies' Association for Protective and Rescue Work
Jewish International Conference:Jewish InternationalConferenceon the Suppressionof the Traf-
fic in Girls and Women.1910. London. Official Report. Private and Confidential.
Sisyphus-Arbeit: Bertha Pappenheim, Sisyphus-Arbeit: Reise-briefe aus dem Jahren 1911 und
1912 (Leipzig, 1924)
VR: VigilanceRecord (London)
129
130 LLOYD P. GARTNER
wantto stay long enoughin town to marrypublicly,sincehe mightbe seized

for militaryconscription.The girl, excited by the prospect,imploresher
parentsto give theirconsentto this proposal.She feelsshe loves this young
man. With him, the bleak life and dismal future in the town will be
exchangedat a strokefor happinessand prosperityin a great, distantcity.
Everymonth a few young townspeoplewere leaving,mainlyfor America.
Alreadytherewere many more marriageablegirls in town than therewere
young men for them. How could such a chancebe thrownaside?Might it
ever recur?If the girl wonderedwhy of all the numerouspoor girls in town
she was enjoyingthese attentions,she would answerin her own mind by
complimentingherself on her prettiness. Her parents, or her surviving
parent or step-parents,gave their consent. If they were reluctantor had
doubts,theyhad only to reflecton whattheycoulddo for thegirl'sfuturethat
was more promising.Now there would be one less at home to feed and
worry about, and, once gone, she would learn,like everyoneelse, to look
out for herself.Off went the girl with heryoungman, obliviousof the skep-
tical glancesof some neighbors.She realizedthey wereonly envious,while
warningsof rabbiscould readilybe disregardedas the cant of stodgygray-
beards.
The voyagewas exhilarating,even in steerage.Attractivelyclad, the girl
noticedhow attentivelyher young man behavedtowardher.She appreciat-
ed his protectiveattitudeagainstthe charactersthat theywerelikelyto meet,
especiallythose from meddlesomeJewishorganizationswho appearedon
boardas soon as the ship docked and asked pryingquestionsof one about
the other. As cousinstravelingtogether-the girl sensiblysaid what he had
suggestedshe say-they got past the Jewishmeddlersat the dock in Ham-
burg and then in London. She felt a twinge of uneasinessat the obvious
suspicionand hostility shown to her betrothed.Experiencesflew so fast,
however,that therewas no time to reflecton them.In London,theywentto
eat in an East End restaurant,wherethe proprietorknew the young man
and displayedmarkedcordialityto the girl. Then the couple went to a flat
belongingto the youngman'ssister-or was it his friendor cousin?
Herethe Cinderellastorystops. Now a fetidrealitycomesto the surface.
The youngmantook thistripseveraltimesyearlywith differentgirlsand, of
course,had intentionswhichwereanythingbut romanticor honorable.He
was in fact the firstlink in a chainof womenand men who cooperatedin an
internationaltraffic in prostitution,known universallyas the white slave
ANGLO-JEWRY AND TRAFFICIN PROSTITUTION 131
trade.' His interest in the poor, attractive girl from the Pale of Settlement lay
only in her commercial value for the prostitute's career she was to follow,
whether willingly or not. After a day or two in the London flat, she might
consent to his advances, and, if not, she might be raped by him and his
accomplices. This abuse went on until, in their tested judgment, she was
despairing and demoralized enough to go on the streets. If she had relations
with him willingly, after a few days she was told there was no more money
and that she had to go to "work" on the streets.
However, it hardly was profitable to come from Eastern Europe only as
far as London. London Jewish girls could be, and were, recruited as prosti-
tutes. Commercially speaking, it was better to keep up the romantic pre-
tenses as far as the final destination, which was usually Argentina. A
demoralized victim might also go out of shame and utter dependence. Once
the long voyage from Liverpool or Southampton ended in Buenos Aires, the
girl was persuaded or forced to submit in case she had not done so earlier.
She was sold to a brothel for ? 75 or ? 100 or more, and we may imagine how
the purchase price was settled. Constantinople, Bombay, Alexandria, and
Rio de Janeiro were other destinations at various times, but Buenos Aires
was long the main terminal for Jewish prostitutes. Jewish girls, it was report-
ed, were the most in demand and fetched the highest prices from the mer-
chants of prostitution overseas.2
Prostitution in the East EuropeanSetting
This, in essence, was the Jewish white slave traffic. Its source of supply
was mainly East European Jewry, which was multiplying at a tremendous
rate throughout the nineteenth century while sinking deeper into poverty all
the time. Russia, Poland, Rumania, and Galicia had about 1,250,000 Jews
in 1800 and 6,200,000 in 1900. Economic opportunities lagged far behind
the needs of the new, young population, just over 50 percent of whom had
not attained their twentieth birthday when they were enumerated in the
1. JAPG&W, Report, 1901, p. 23. A sketch, in Hebrew, of the subject by A. Stal appeared in
Megamot 24 (August, 1978): 204-15.
2. R. Paulucci de'Calboli, "La tratta delle raggazze italiane," Nuova antologia 38 (Whole
no. 182) (1902): 421-22.
Russian census of 1897. The Jewish population increase was most pro-
nounced in cities, especially in such vast new urban Jewish communities as
Warsaw, Lodz, Odessa, and Bialystok where the combined number of Jews,
about 15,000 in 1800, reached 505,000 in 1900. Some venerable Jewish com-
munities also multiplied, such as Vilna, which went from 5,700 in 1800 to
64,000 around 1900.
These great population increases entailed not only a massive demo-
graphic shift, but also extensive social dislocation. Young men and women
left their small towns and moved to large cities, whether in quest of educa-
tion or employment, or increased breadth and variety of life. Living apart
from their families was a state of affairs which traditional Jewish society
hardly contemplated and viewed with disfavor, especially as concerned
women. The lot of the single girl in the city was harder than the man's, since
her employment possibilities were very limited, hours very long, and pay
very low. Nor did these working girls have any suitable place to spend their
little free time; no clubs or educational facilities existed for them in Galicia3
nor elsewhere, probably, in Eastern Europe. Traditional Jewish society, with
all its communal inventiveness, was still unprepared for such a social group
and uncomprehending of its needs. Many a lonely, overworked, underpaid
working girl could find her only pleasure and release in sensual gratification.
The same might be said of many young men, working as hard as the girls
and also lacking family. Their plight often meant that social and sexual
norms fell by the wayside. They were portrayed movingly by A. M.
Borokhov (Brukhov; later Berekhyahu, 1869-1946), an ex-rabbi turned
publicist and living in Berne. He wrote of
... a seamstressor factoryworker,an employeein someone'shome or store,

who lovedsomeoneof herown class.On one of the manyeveningswhenafter
twelvehours'workshe sat withherbelovedin herroom,theypouredforththe
bitternessof theirwearyhearts.A feelingof compassiontowardone another
grewstronger.As compassiontowardone anotherovercamethem,so did the
feelingof love, whichis so muchlikeit. Thesefeelingswithinthemincreasedin
power,as the pair suddenlyrealizedthat they werealone in the greatworld,
that no one noticedthemor troubledaboutthem ... Theirsenseof isolation
in life drewthem close to each other, and they beganto dreamof the happy
3. Bertha Pappenheim and Sara Rabinowitsch, Zur Lage der jiidischen Bevolkerung in
Galizien:Reise-Eindruckeund Vorschldgezur Besserung der Verhaltnisse(Frankfurt, 1904), pp.
76, 79-80.
futurewhichwouldbe theirs.Dreamingled themto a warmintimacyof heart,

andthis led, as it usuallydoes, to intimacyof body.. ...4
Still, from sexual lapses to sexual promiscuity there was a large step, and
thence to prostitution was still a greater one. The transition from occasional
or part-time prostitution to employment in commercially organized sexual
vice meant a further step. Each of these phases existed in East European
Jewry before the close of the nineteenth century. Trafficking in prostitution
was treated in that great, unsparing realist Mendele Mokher Seforim's novel
In the Vale of Tears (Be-'emeq ha-bakha) and in its Yiddish version, The
Wishing Ring (Dos Vintshfingerl).Written during the 1880s, this work was
set during the 1840s and 1850s. By the turn of the twentieth century, a demi-
monde of brothels owned by Jews and inhabited by Jewish prostitutes
existed in Warsaw and Lodz.5 Vilna's Jewish prostitutes, said to be numer-
ous, were allegedly drawn from the small towns of Lithuania.6 The existence
of brothels owned by Jews and inhabited by Jewish prostitutes is also
attested for Brody, Lemberg, Tarnopol, Cracow, and Czernowitz, and they
were no doubt to be found elsewhere. A report published in London tells of
twenty-six Jews convicted in Lemberg in 1892 for procuring girls who were
to be sold in Alexandria and points east. Sixty had been rescued a year ear-
lier in Constantinople by the Austrian consul.7 Nevertheless, as late as 1912
the established Jewish communal leadership both in Brody and Tarnopol
denied that the traffic existed in their cities although "everyone knew," in
4. Ha-Melis, June 20 (July 3), 1904; Borokhov-Berekhyahu's collected writings, Nekhasim

va-'arakhin(Tel Aviv, 1938), do not include this article.
5. A. Litvak (Hayyim Ya'aqov Helfand), Mah she-hayah, trans. from Yiddish, Vos Geven,
by H. Sh. Ben-Avram (Ein-Harod, 1945), pp. 159-64; Sisyphus-Arbeit, pp. 144-45, 158. Lit-
vak's story of the Jewish mass assault on Jewish brothels in Warsaw during the revolutionary
disturbances in May, 1905 is confirmed by reports form the local British vice-consul, W. B. St.
Claire, to Ambassador Hardinge in St. Petersburg: "On the 25th May the disturbances were
renewed when large crowds of [Jewish] men and boys went to disorderly houses, attacked the
inmates and proceeded to demolish the contents. There was no attempt at robbery, everything
was completely destroyed." Fifty Jewish brothels were wrecked, and only afterwards did non-
Jews join in the rioting (E. B. St. Claire to Ch. Hardinge, May 27, 1905, enclosure in Ch. Hard-
inge to Marquess of Lansdowne, May 30, 1905, F.O. 65/1700, No. 351; also F.O. 393/22, No.
19, May 22, 1905 Public Record Office). My colleague Prof. E. Feldman generously provided
this material.
6. Ha-Dor (Cracow), vol. 1, no. 24 (June 13, 1901), p. 5; Ha-Melis, July 11 (24), 1902; Sisy-
phus-Arbeit,p. 166.
7. VR, July, 1892, pp. 78-79, January, 1893, p. 99. See Edward J. Bristow, Vice
and Vigilance:Purity Movementsin Britain since 1700 (Dublin and Totowa, N.J., 1977), p. 178.
the words of Bertha Pappenheim (1859-1936), the German Jewish social

worker and feminist, that it did exist.8
Contemporary Yiddish plays of the realistic theater, including Peretz
Hirschbein's Miriam of 1905 and Sholem Asch's Got fun nekome (1912)
created a stir with their theme of prostitution. Both plays treated the Jewish
traffic in prostitution in terms which make clear that the audience was well
aware of its existence. Popular awareness is also demonstrated by the large,
varied vocabulary and numerous sayings about prostitution.9 Miriam,
originally written in Hebrew, was Hirschbein's first dramatic work, and it
virtually stages articles written by "A.", discussed below, and Borokhov.
Miriam is a lovable, innocent orphan from a village who comes to a "large
Lithuanian city"-obviously Vilna-to work in a cellar hosiery workshop.
She meets Zilberman, a wealthy, handsome young man and, heedless of her
fellow workers' warning, goes with him. She becomes pregnant by Zilber-
man, who abandons her. About to give birth, Miriam staggers back to the
workshop, where her old friends aid her. The play ends with Miriam as an
ill-treated inmate of a brothel, her baby boy cared for by a nurse, visiting
remorsefully with a Jewish and a Christian fellow prostitute. All of the
themes are present in Hirschbein's play: class distinction between the man
and the girl, the disgrace of illegitimate childbearing, the tragic descent into
prostitution.
Bertha Pappenheim concluded that "the root of the evil [was] misery,
with its consequent social debasement of habits, customs, and thought."
What was happening in Eastern Europe could happen in East London, she
added, because the roots of immorality lay in a "housing problem, a wage
problem, an education and upbringing problem."?1She and her associates of
the Jiidischer Frauenbund argued that there were elements of the traditional
8. Sisyphus-Arbeit,pp. 158, 201-5; JAPG&W,Report, 1912, p. 32.

9. Assembled in Nahum Stutchkoff, Der Oytserfun der yidisher shprakh (Thesaurusof the
Yiddish Language) (New York, 1950), sec. 598, pp. 693-95. Thirty-four songs and ditties by
and about prostitutes are in Pinkhos Graubord, "Gezangen fun tehoym... (Lider fun
ganovim, arestanten, gasn-froyen)," in M. Vanvild, ed., Bay undz yidn: Zamelbukhfarfolklor
unfilologiye (Warsaw, 1923), pp. 19-41.
10. Quoted in JAPG&W,Report, 1903, p. 40; Referat von FrduleinBertha Pappenheimerstat-
tet in einer von dem Vorstandedes Israelitsches Hilfsvereins einberufenen Versammlungam 26.
Februar1901, p. 6. On Bertha Pappenheim, see Marion A. Kaplan, The Jewish Feminist Move-
ment in Germany(Westport, Conn., 1979), especially pp. 103-45, and the same author's "Ger-
man-Jewish Feminism in the Twentieth Century," Jewish Social Studies 38 (1976): 34-53, esp.
44-49; Dora Edinger, "Bertha Pappenheim (1859-1936): A German-Jewish Feminist." Jewish
Social Studies 20 (1958): 178-86.
form of Jewish life which abetted the evil. Hasidim, they emphasized, placed
women in "a very, very subordinate position," and their education was
sorely neglected. In East European Jewry generally, female literacy was a
good deal lower than that of males. Thus, of the 712 unaccompanied girl
immigrants who arrived in London in 1907, 65 percent were "totally illiter-
ate or could write only a little Yiddish. . . ."' Dazzled by their new life in
large towns, girls even from pious families might turn to prostitution, it was
contended, since they were untaught in their own individuality and worth. 2
Pursuing the point, Pappenheim reported that she repeatedly heard from
local physicians of "a shockingly large number of girls and women of 'better
families"' who were untroubled by poverty and were outwardly pious, yet
carried on furtively as prostitutes.13
The German Jewish visitor knew of girls who undertook prostitution for
amusement, and then, "often depending on external circumstances," made
the trade their full-time occupation. Some parents indifferently permitted
their daughters to dress up in order to promenade unescorted in the streets,
a practice only slightly less reprehensible in terms of traditional norms.'4
Pappenheim insisted not only on a causal nexus between poverty and prosti-
tution, but on a far more contentious link between prostitution and the
social and religious subordination of women, particularly in Hasidic life.
Few would endorse Bertha Pappenheim's views in full. Such a critique of the
upbringing and status of women within the traditional community implied a
still wider critique, which could not be undertaken by those who desired the
collaboration of East European rabbis. Yet the social dislocations described
here, and the diminishing hold of traditional life, found these rabbis baffled
and disturbed and able to do little.
By no means was the recruitment of prostitutes confined to East Euro-
pean Ashkenazic Jewry. Pappenheim reported graphically on the extensive
recruitment of young Jewish girls in such cities as Salonika, Philippopolis,
Adrianople, Belgrade, and elsewhere in Balkan Europe, for brothels operat-
ed by Jews in those cities and elsewhere, especially Constantinople. Recruit-
ment was in fact more brazen and less furtive than in Eastern Europe.'5
11. JAPG&W, Report, 1907, p. 14.

12. Sidonie Werner, "Zur Sittlichkeitsfrage," in Referate gehalten auf dem 2. Delegierten-
tage des JudischenFrauenbundesFrankfurta. M., 2 und3 Oktober 1903, pp. 23-3 1.
13. Pappenheim and Rabinowitsch, Zur Lage, p. 47.
14. Ibid., pp. 49, 50.
15. Sisyphus-Arbeit,pp. 19, 28, 34, 36-37, 40-42, 51-53, 56, 64.
It was demographic realities and social and cultural demoralization

which brought about the prostitution problem. Demography with its eco-
nomic consequences led to mass migration. Thus, prostitution and migra-
tion were linked.
The statistical basis for this threefold connection of demography, migra-
tion and prostitution may be found in the Russian census of 1897. Here, a
bulge in one age cohort invites particular attention. The number of male and
female children under ten years of age is about equal, but in the next cohort,
however, that from ten to twenty years of age, there is a great difference:
646,000 females to 563,000 males, about a 53:47 ratio (in fact, near 54:46),
establishing a most unusual disproportion of 113 females to 100 males. Yet
in the next older age cohort, that from 20 to 30 years of age, the ratio almost
evens itself, with 429,000 females to 414,000 males, a normal 51:49 ratio, or
slightly under 104 females to 100 males. Girls were obviously innocent of
statistics, but no doubt they noticed how many likely bridegrooms were
going away, especially from small towns. By no means did all the young men
go abroad; many remained in Russia and were enumerated in large cities.
The sex ratio of the 10-20 age cohort in the small places must therefore have
been even more lopsided than 53:47. How many girls followed men overseas
as wives or fiancees may be inferred from the evening out in the 20-29 age
cohort.'6 The girl who persuaded her family to permit her to emigrate in the
company of the attractive young man was seeking her future by joining the
great tide of young people, first men and then women, who were moving
westward. She believed she was going under fortunate circumstances.
Available evidence also shows that comparatively few girls and un-
married young women emigrated alone. Between 1900 and 1913 inclusive,
375,985 steerage passengers, the vast majority of them Jews, disembarked at
the port of London from ships which came from the Continent. Among
them were no more than 11,668 unaccompanied females, constituting 3.10
percent of the total, of whom around 10 percent were Christians. During the
six years preceding 1897, the proportion of unaccompanied girls and women
was in fact somewhat higher: 1,827 out of 40,941 passengers at London,
equivalent to 4.46 percent.17Of the total number of unaccompanied Jewish
16. I. M. Rubinow, "Economic Condition of the Jews in Russia," Bulletin of the Bureau of
Labor 72 (1907): 487-579 (reprinted as a book, New York, 1970).
17. These figures, as well as those in the next paragraph, are drawn from the Annual
Reports of the Jewish Association for the Protection of Girls and Women. The proportion of
Christians among the unaccompanied females is given for ten scattered years, and ranges in
girls, which is approximately 10,500, those who had not attained their twen-
tieth birthday numbered around 5,460 or 52 percent. Since the age at mar-
riage of Russian Jewish women was ascending sharply in the decades before
the census, from below 21 before 1881 to 23.0 in 1892-1896, there is also no
surprise that the fragmentary information on this point shows that a mere
6.86 percent of the girls under 20 were married when they landed in Lon-
don.'8 Of course, girls no less than boys emigrated with parents or some
other mature relative. But among young people emigrating alone, there were
many times more unaccompanied males from the 10-20 age cohort on the
emigrant ships than there were females. For Jewish emigration as a whole to
the United States before 1914, the male preponderance was on the order of
56:44. Following World War I the preponderance was reversed, as masses of
wives rejoined their husbands after years of separation on account of the
war.
The view that men going alone emigrated overseas at a younger age than
did single or unaccompanied women is therefore well founded. Few young
women went alone, most going either as children, or years later as wives and
mothers. The numbers recorded in the port of London alone were large
enough to influence substantially the census figures in Russia-not to men-
tion the port of New York, where no reason is apparent for supposing that
the proportions were any different, if the figures existed.19 Thus, young
women, far more than young men, stayed behind in Russia and were
counted in 1897. Somewhat later they followed the men, but in Russian
Jewry itself there was in the meantime a definite shortage of marriageable
young men. This imbalance was bound to aggravate existing sexual and
marital problems within East European Jewry which social and cultural
change had created.
A comprehensive view of sexual and marital problems, which pressed
extreme conclusions, was presented by "A.", who wrote in the Cracow
Hebrew weekly Ha-Dor in 1901. He declared that, notwithstanding literary
suggestions to the contrary, Jewish women were chaste before and during
random fashion from 6.86% to 16.66%;the average is 9.82%. In the first two years available,
1887-1888 and 1896-1897, there are 432 unaccompanied females, of whom 61 (14.1%) were
Christians. However, the proportion of unaccompanied Jewish girls and women to the total
number of immigrants is quite stable, dipping no lower than 2.25% in 1912 and climbing no
higher than 3.72%in 1903.
18. 52 out of 929 in 1906, and 61 out of 712 in 1907.
19. United States immigration figures divide immigrants into three age groups: under 15,
15 to 44, 45 and over. Therefore they are not of use here.
marriage. However, the men were often libertine, especially those of the
upper class and many from the middle class who traveled extensively on
business and were seldom at home. "A." alleged regretfully that a double
standard applied. The men's offenses were taken lightly, while those of
women were judged severely. Married women, he found, tend to flirtatious-
ness, but "A." was forgiving: "A Jewish woman false to her husband is an
extraordinarily rare occurrence among all our groupings and classes. Only
among the obscurantist Hasidim who marry off their 'educated' daughters
against their wishes, to men not to their taste-only within this group does it
happen that there are 'forbidden relations,' and there too it happens very
seldom." The furtive married prostitutes reported by Bertha Pappenheim
may have been the same type of woman as "A." knew of, but she found
them less rare. "A." argued that educated young women who were accus-
tomed to mixed company and moved assuredly within it, maintained their
moral purity better than "the daughters of obscurantist parents, brought up
like captives, who are never permitted any association with the opposite
sex-[it is] they [who] are ready to stumble and succumb, who are about to
fall into the hands of any man chancing to meet them furtively." Denied
experience of life, such girls conjured up a realm of sexual fantasy to take its
place and, unable to cope with realities, were easily seduced.20But then, the
anonymous writer declared, proletarian girls in large cities had become the
major exception to Jewish female chastity, and as he would have it, this was
largely because of salacious Yiddish literature and the amorous adventur-
ousness of upper-class young men. These poor and socially ambitious girls
could attract upper-class bridegrooms only by generosity with their sexual
favors. Like Hirschbein's Miriam, the girl would merely be exploited and
then jilted, most often when she became pregnant. Then, "she must descend
into the camp of the 'fallen.' Yes, she must." The informative but highly
opinionated article condemned to banishment from decent society every girl
who strayed. "The one who goes to a house of shame can no longer damage
us, while the offender in our midst can cause harm to her friends' chastity."
In order to preserve Jewish moral standards, condemnation had to be ir-
revocable, "A." insisted. True, promiscuous men merited as severe a sen-
tence as women, "but what can we do, for men alone make the social and
religious laws!" Relentless as "A." was against these supposed prostitutes
by choice, he was dismayed at "clean and innocent daughters of Israel sold
into shame by the deceitful methods of criminal Jews." He alleged that most
20. Pappenheim and Rabinowitsch, Zur Lage, pp. 21-22.

Jews were tolerant of these traffickers, regarding them as men who pursued
one branch of commerce which was hardly different from others. Nothing
was being done against the traffic; for example, "the masses still follow the
advice of their rabbis," and the rabbis were failing to speak vigorously
against the evil. "One way or another, the 'trade' is flourishing, and no one
lifts a finger to save the daughters of Israel! Yet we swell with pride over our
chastity!"2'
This astonishing discussion contains a good deal of information and
awareness of prevailing sexual relations, which is combined with pro-
nounced class prejudice. By the standards he professed, "A." was peculiarly
tolerant of middle-class sexual foibles. He regretfully accepted the double
standard of sexual morality, by which he largely released men from moral
culpability for their misconduct. "A."'s last-ditch defense of sexual morals
is strangely selective. It was only upon the frail shoulders of a proletarian
Jewish girl, whose hopes and ambitions led to her betrayal by an upper class
man, that "A." laid the entire weight of moral responsibility, and he pressed
it down harder by the denial that any path to self-correction or forgiveness
existed. If such a wayward proletarian girl really represented voluntary
prostitution, then the stringent line which "A." drew between the willing
prostitute and the involuntary was dubious indeed. Moreover, Jewish public
opinion took a more stringent view of traffickers than "A." alleged. There
were numerous public warnings against doubtful bridegrooms, and soon
after "A."'s article a conference on white slavery was held in Lemberg in
1903 which East European rabbis attended. The brothel keeper in Sholem
Asch's play of 1912, God of Retribution, was not permitted to seat him-
self in the synagogue or receive any synagogue honors. When as his first step
back to decency he commissions the writing of a Torah scroll, no one will
enter his house to celebrate its completion. If the Jews would not collaborate
with the police force to root out Jewish prostitution, as they were indeed
doing in New York City at exactly that time,22 decent Jewish society
21. Ha-Dor, vol. 1, no. 24, June 13, 1901, pp. 4-6.
22. Arthur A. Goren, New YorkJews and the Questfor Community: The Kehillah Experi-
ment, 1908-1922 (New York, 1970), pp. 159-86. In 1913 a careful investigation found 423 dis-
orderly houses on the Lower East Side; ibid., p. 17. The operations of one of them are docu-
mented in the same author's "Mother Rosie Hertz, the Social Evil, and the New York Kehil-
lah," in Michael: On the History of the Jews in the Diaspora 3 (1975): 188-210. This brothel
functioned for thirty years until it was shut by the police in 1913, and recruited its prostitutes
not from the international traffic but among local girls. The same appears true generally of
Jewish prostitution in the United States. Louis E. Levy, "Jewish Aspects of the So-Called
White Slave Traffic in America," in Jewish International Conference, especially p. 252. Euro-
pean sources hardly ever refer to America as a destination for traffickers.
shunned and ostracized such persons. "A."'s strictures in Cracow upon

Jewish sexual morals in Vilna irritated Ha-Meli$, as did his attack on the
morals of Yiddish actors and on "a certain type" of supposedly immoral
Yiddish literature.23Also replying to "A.", A. M. Borokhov objected that it
was impossible to expect universal self-restraint in matters of sex. "A." had
suggested sexual practices were changing, but then took his stand on one
limited issue only, for which he reserved harsh condemnation. Borokhov, in
rebuttal, rewrote sympathetically the sad tale of the jilted proletarian girl
(quoted above) and proceeded to argue for a revised sexual morality. Girls
stray from the path "in every group where it is not customary to marry them
off as soon as they reach maturity and whose members retain a spark of life
in their breast." Persons whose passions do not kindle should not make
boast of the virtue of continence, commendable as that is. "Innocence and
chastity" are possible only within a proper family life, and Borokhov there-
fore reached the novel conclusion that "whatever a person does with the
intention of living a peaceful, loving family life can not be deemed promis-
cuity." The proletarian girl who carries on relations with her upper class
beloved commits "transgression and sin ... but not by any means 'promis-
cuity' contrary to religious command, nor from the moral viewpoint is she
'falling....' A society which requires for its existence that such girls be
thrust into houses of prostitution bears within itself its own poison and rot-
tenness. Better for it not to exist."24
This debate ranged far beyond the discussion of a significant social prob-
lem. "A.", lenient toward middle class but not proletarian sexuality, took
his stand on the sternest interpretation of female chastity, while Borokhov in
reply espoused a limited version of a love ethic: a man and woman who
seriously meant to become permanently linked could not be morally wrong
for having sexual relations. The issues raised by both writers, if familiar and
perennial in Western secular society, were not all so in East European Jewry,
where halakhah still set the standards for sexual and marital relations. Pre-
ferring the claims of true love to the requirements of law was heady stuff.
The rival contentions also bear importantly upon the difference between
23. Ha-Melis, July 11 (24), 1901. Mr. Yossi Goldstein provided this and several other refer-
ences to Hebrew periodicals.
24. Ha-Meli$, June 20 (July 3), 1901.
sexual lapses and promiscuity, and between promiscuity and prostitution,

and how each was to be defined and treated.
Perhaps the clearest summary of the problem comes from a distant but
well-informed source. The Jewish Association for the Protection of Girls
and Women, in London, possessed lengthy and intensive experience of the
persons involved in the prostitution traffic. Several thousand cases which
came to their notice led them to definite conclusions:
In Russia,Rumaniaand Galiciathe conditionsunderwhichthe Jewsare

largelyforcedto live is a directincentiveto the WhiteSlaveTraffic.Girls are
only too glad to escape from the wearinessand grindingpovertyof homes
wherethey are often not allowedto learna trade.Theirparents,seeingseem-
inglyeligibleyoung men come to theirvillageseagerlygive theirdaughtersto
themin marriageor entrustthemto theircarein orderto have'excellentsitu-
ations'found for themabroad... 25
Many written warnings and no doubt oral reports circulated, but

nevertheless quite a few of the girls who left home with men were willing, at
least at the outset, to enter upon the prostitute's career. Unhappy at home,
they were eager to enjoy what appeared from afar to be a life of material and
sensual pleasure in the glitter of a great city:
Unfortunately,there are also girls who leave their homes knowingthat

theyleadimpurelives.Butthesetoo arevictims.Theyaretold of the attractive
side of the life and it is only when they have reachedtheir destinationsthat
they realisethe horrorof theirposition and the absolutecontrolover them,
morallyandphysically,acquiredby the dealersin humanbeings ... 26
A balanced judgment is presented a few years later:
Girls from Galicia, Rumania,etc. coming mostly from villages,do not

suddenlymake up their mindsto go to BuenosAires or Rio to earna liveli-
hood, and at once becomewomenof bad character.It is only underthe direc-
tion or compulsionof somebodywho has obtainedan enormousinfluence
overthemthat theydo.27
25. JAPG&W,
Report, 1908, p. 19.
26. JAPG&W,
Report, 1902, p. 27.
27. JAPG&W, Report, 1910, p. 31.
Traffickersat Work
The traffic in actual and potential prostitutes constituted a minuscule

part of the vast westward movement of East European Jewry. The traf-
fickers' work was made easier by this tide of migration, since it was so com-
mon to leave in search of opportunities abroad. The Warsaw Hebrew daily
Ha-$efirah received letters from villages which told of well-dressed, mar-
riageable young men who appeared there and took away local girls as their
brides. The dangers of the practice were becoming widely known:
We recentlyreada storyaboutmany"eligibles,"an entiretransportof "eligi-

ble youngmen,"who camefromoverseasto the portof Odessa,andspreadall
overthe country,to all the benightedlittletowns.
We can well imaginethat beforelong all these "bridegrooms"will return
with theirvery beautiful"brides"to boardships bound for Constantinople,
BuenosAires,andwherever....
Not a sound,not a word-the storyis over.28
Actually, it was "known to the police of various countries that men

travel to and fro between Europe and America, going through the [mar-
riage] ceremony twice or even three times a year, in order to secure vic-
tims."29 The Jewish organizations were aware of these techniques, and
recognized that the "cunning" of the traffickers was "most extraordinary."
Theyknow the laws directedagainstthemand theirevil workquiteas well as

those who make the laws. They often possessconsiderablewealthand there-
fore do not mind spendingmoney in orderto obtain a successfulresult....
Theiragentswork unceasinglyin the townsand villagesof Russia,Rumania,
Galicia,and othercountries.One of theirfavoritemethodsis to lurethe girls
by posing as well-to-doyoung men in searchof a wife. Theirsmartappear-
anceandpersuasivemannerssoon gainthe confidenceof theirintendedvictim
and evenof thegirls'parents. ... Sheconsentsto marry.Themenaregeneral-
ly too cunningto go througha properlegal and religiousceremony,though
bigamyis a lightmatterwiththem,but theyget the partiesconcernedto agree
to somesecretmarriage.Any certificateor papersthatmayhavebeenusedare
worthless,and for greatersecurity,they are usually soon destroyedby the
men. Another method these wicked men adopt is to hold out dazzling
28. Ha-$efirah, February 5 (18), 1904.

29. JAPG&W,Report, 1901, p. 23.
promisesof good situations,wherelargewages can be earned,and this very

often temptsa credulousand friendlessgirl. Or, whenthey havegot theirvic-
tims far away from their homes, underpretenceof findingtheir relativesor
friends,they inveigletheminto housesof ill fameand so degradeand ill-treat
them that they are afraid,even if they could do so, to tell theirstory to any-
body, fearingthat, being in a strangeland, not knowingthe language,and
withoutfriends,theywouldnot be believed.30
As early as 1890, a notice went to the Jewish press on the Continent,

"warning young girls from leaving their homes by the advice of strangers or
under the care of strangers."31The evil had increased by 1898, to judge from
the pained announcement by eight prominent West European rabbis that
year. Addressing their East European colleagues, they too urged them to
warn families against the danger of unknown young men seeking to
marry local girls only to make prostitutes of them. "Remove this dreadful
disgrace from upon us," they implored.32Bertha Pappenheim claimed that
"much of the vice . . . is due to the laxity with which marriages are some-
times conducted and divorces granted among the Jews in Eastern Europe,
including Galicia."33
False bridegrooms to lure girls into leaving home were the means
employed by the two Jewish men and the mistress of one of them, who were
sentenced in Piotrkow in 1902 for activities which had come to light three
years earlier. The "bridegrooms" had claimed they had to leave Russian soil
before the wedding, in order to avoid seizure for conscription. Girls from
Bendin and Sosnowiec were enticed into the prostitution traffic, once their
"fiances" crossed the border with them into Galicia at Czernowitz. The girls
were passed along on some excuse to other confederates, and they in turn
inveigled the girls into boarding British ships. Because they knew no Eng-
lish, the victims reportedly felt unable to report any suspicions they might by
then have felt. Less innocent girls were tempted with fine clothing and pro-
30. JAPG&W, Report, 1905, pp. 24-25. Information on Jewish procurers of girls for export
is found in VR, August, 1887, p. 52; November, 1888, p. 118; May, 1890, p. 39; December,
1890, p. 121; July, 1891, p. 72.
31. JLA,Gentlemen's Committee, Minutes, April 25, 1890. The surviving records of the JLA
and its successor, the JAPG&W,are at the Jewish Welfare Board (formerly Jewish Board of
Guardians), London. I am indebted to the Board, and particularly to Mr. Mark Fineman, for
permission to use them.
32. Ha-Melis, March 27 (April 9), 1898.
33. JAPG&W, Report, 1903, p. 50.
mises of a bright future in Buenos Aires. The three miscreants' sentence of

thirty days was increased by a higher tribunal to one year, and the two men
were deported to a Siberian penal colony to serve their time.34
At the border railway station of Podwolocyska, where twenty broad-
gauge Russian trains arrived daily, girls were often tricked into missing their
connecting narrow-gauge Austrian train. They could then be plied by traf-
fickers, who might lure them across the border by night train to the town of
Maximow, and thence to Tarnopol.35These border operators were reported
to be impoverished individuals, for whom dealing in women was part of
their general smuggling activities. A suggestion was even presented to com-
pensate these men for ceasing their activities and find honest work for them,
but it was promptly rejected.36Emigrant travel was particularly difficult for
unaccompanied women, or those with little children. Suffering from natural
physical limitations or frightened by travel, they had to cope with baggage
and attend to their children. Parents, and husbands who had emigrated
earlier and were now sending for their families, were warned of the dangers.
In recentyearstherehas beena greatdeal of emigrationby youngwomen.

Most of themarepracticallygirls, sixteenand seventeenyearsof age, who, in
orderto calmsomewhattheirdisturbanceat traveling,tryto attachthemselves
to some impressivemanwho will look afterthem.Usuallytheyhappenupona
youngman who is also en routeto America,and who promisesto watchover
them attentively.Sometimesthe girlsaretakenin by cheats,and follow them
like docilelambs.37
Even mothers traveling with young children were not exempt from
molestation and seduction.
A young marriedwomanwas on her way to Englandwith her threechil-

dren, to join her husband.On her journey from Galicia she fell in with a
womanwho was a notorioustrafficker,andwho introducedherto a manwho
was also allegedto be travelingto England.At Hamburghe sent two of the
children forwardto England by boat and induced the woman to remain
34. Ha-MeliS, July 1(14), 1902.

35. Bertha Pappenheim, who visited the place, considered the local antitraffic committee
ineffective. Sisyphus-Arbeit,p. 207, dated September 6, 1912.
36. AZJ, July 18, 1902, p. 339; July 25, 1902, p. 353; letter to editor, FrankfurterZeitung,
July 9, 1902-not seen.
37. Ha-Melis, February 26 (March 10), 1904.
behindwith her little girl. He said he had decidedto go to BuenosAires,and

underpromisesof lettingher husbandknow and gettinghim to join them, he
madereadyfor thejourney.38
The promise was of course not kept, and the traces of the acquiescent
woman were lost.39 However, it was more common and probably easier to
take in an unmarried girl and her family:
[A girl] was living with an aged motherat the house of a sister,when a

"Shadchan"(MarriageBroker)calledand said he had a young man for her.
As everythingappearedsatisfactoryto them, the engagementtook place.
About a week afterwardsthe young man said he had receivedan important
letterfroma friendwho was leavingLondonfor America,and he inducedthe
girlto go to Londonwithhim,whereshe stayedat the houseof his sister.After
a few days he said that the departurehad been delayedfor a week, and sug-
gestedthat, as they had nothingto wait for, they shouldget marriedby "Stille
Chupe"[furtivemarriage].Sherefusedthis as she wantedto be properlymar-
riedin Synagogue.He thentold herthathe wasgoingto see his friendoff from
Liverpooland sheconsentedto accompanyhim.Whilsttheywereon the boat,
it startedoff, and she becameverymuchafraid.She, however,couldspeakno
English,and was told the boat was going to Londonfirstand that it wouldbe
all right. She soon, however,found this was a falsehood,but fearedto say
anything.The man had sent a postcardto her relativesfrom London,saying
theywouldsoon return.Shewas takento BuenosAires.... 40
By bravery and obstinacy she avoided the prostitute's career which was
to be forced upon her and succeeded in escaping and being returned to
Russia. In a similar case, however, the girl was lost:
... She had been broughtto Londonby a trafficker.... He intendedtak-

ing her to anothercountry.. . . The man had gone to the Russianvillageand
statedthat he was a wealthymerchantand that he wanteda wife.Thegirl was
introducedand the marriagetook place.No properenquiriesas to the man's
characterappearto have been made.All went well for a littlewhile,the hus-
band makingonly short absencesfrom home, until one day he proposeda
journeyto London,and gave an addressof a friendwheretheywouldbe stay-
38. JAPG&W,Report, 1911, p. 49.

39. Ibid.
40. JAPG&W,Report, 1911, p. 52.
ing ... the addressgivenwas thatof a manwho was in leaguewithmanytraf-

fickersand who conductedsome of theirnegotiations.He was severelyques-
tioned,but said the coupleonly stoppedwith him two days, and then left for
Americawithoutgivingan address.Furtherenquiriesprovedthat the husband
wasa well-knowntraffickerwho passedundervariousnames .. .4.
Contemporaries felt uncertain about how much to blame the girls drawn
into prostitution, either to work the trade in their native land or to emigrate
for that purpose. However, the men were despised and execrated.
The daughtersof Israelarechasteand modest,but theirinnocenceis their

undoing. Most of those entrapped... strugglewith all their might against
their bitter fate, and some choose death rather than a life of shame. .. . Girls
who frivolouslysubject themselvesto disgraceby their free will, for well
known social and economicreasons,are not easily redeemed.It is easierto
redeemthose who fall becauseof theirinnocence,and againsttheirwill.42
In London during 1892, "a man named Kahn, well-known as one of the
chiefs of this inhuman traffic," was tried for the abduction of Fanny E., who
had run away from her respectable home after a quarrel with her fiance. The
girl, who had been rescued from Kahn in France, insisted on shielding the
man in court and he went free.43One Isaac Schaferstein was convicted in
Vienna in 1902 of transporting an estimated 400 Jewish and gentile girls
yearly to brothels in the East, for which he was sentenced to one year in
prison.44
East European Jewry was the main reservoir out of which several thou-
sand Jewish girls were drawn into prostitution in foreign lands, and out of
which Jewish men, as well as women accomplices, emerged as procurers and
transporters of prostitutes and keepers of brothels. It is probable that most
Jewish prostitutes never left Eastern Europe. However, the most con-
41. JAPG&W, Report, 1911, p. 50.

42. Ha-$efirah, February 5 (18), 1904.
43. National Vigilance Association, Seventh Annual Report of the Executive Committee,
1892, p. 36; JLA,Gentlemen's Committee, Minutes, June 27 and December 27, 1891.
44. R. Paulucci de'Calboli, "Ancora la tratta delle ragazze italiene," Nuova antologia 38
(Whole no. 185) (1902): 195-97. The author, an Italian marquess, replied to an inquiry by
Arthur R. Moro regarding statements in his article concerning Jews, with the observation that
out of respect for Jews and reluctance to provide material to anti-Semites, he had refrained
from publishing the finding of an investigation conducted by himself and "certain French
authorities" that 75%of traffickers were Jews. Jewish InternationalConference,p. 36.
spicuous branch, and undoubtedly the most profitable, was the internation-
al. Girls were transported overseas to South America, South Africa, and
even the Far East, usually via England, for a career of service in brothels.
Others were taken to Turkish and Egyptian destinations, often by the
Danube and Black Sea. Here we shall concentrate on England as a destina-
tion as well as a transit point, and describe the efforts made by Anglo-Jewry
and its collaborators to suppress the traffic.
An Abominable Traffic in London
The East European Jewish traffickers who transported Jewish girls to

England at first found little obstacle in English law. Prostitution itself had
been long known among English Jews, but it was negligible when compared
with the extent of prostitution in England at large.45 Extensive evidence
exists on the sexual practices and foibles of English society at all its levels,
and the prevalence of prostitution.46 Before 1885, the basic law regarding
prostitution was the Vagrancy Act of 1824, under which it was an offense, in
the words of Halsbury, for a "common prostitute [to be] wandering in a
public street or public highway, or in any place of public resort, and behav-
ing in a riotous or indecent manner." Such conduct could bring a sentence of
thirty days.47There had to be a complaint by the offended person, who was
45. Todd M. Endelman, The Jews of Georgian England 1714-1830 (Philadelphia, 1979), p.
217; Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, 4 vols. (London, 1861; reprint ed.,
New York, 1968), 4: 223, 241, and, on the recruitment of English girls for the traffic abroad, pp.
268-72.
46. Bristow, Vice and Vigilance; Cyril Pearl, The Girl with the Swansdown Seat (London,
1955); Walter E. Houghton, The Victorian Frame of Mind (New Haven, 1957), pp. 365-68,
384-85, 408-9; Duncan Crow, The Victorian Woman (London, 1971), pp. 212-31,258-68;
Steven Marcus, The Other Victorians(New York, 1966); Geoffrey Best, Mid-Victorian Britain
(New York, 1971), pp. 28-33, 216-17; K. V. Thomas, "The Double Standard," Journal of the
History of Ideas 20 (1959): 195-216; Peter Cominos, "Late Victorian Sexual Respectability and
the Social System," International Review of Social History 8 (1963): 18-48, 216-50; Eric Trud-
gill, "Prostitution and Paterfamilias," in H. J. Dyos and Michael Wolff, eds., The Victorian
City: Images and Realities, 2 vols. (London and Boston, 1973), 2: 693-705. The thorough
empirical study by Frances Finnegan, Povertyand Prostitution: A Study of VictorianProstitutes
in New York (Cambridge, 1979), places its subjects in a grim setting of poverty and privation
and early death from venereal disease and the effects of drink. Rescue efforts showed little
success.
47. Cited, with commentary, from Halsbury's Laws of England,4th ed., 11 (London, 1976),
pars. 1117-18, pp. 608, 609. Judge I. Finestein, Q.C., has kindly aided me in understanding the
legal matters which are discussed here.
also required to testify in court. Obviously, few men who had been accosted
by a prostitute would complain, especially because they could be cross-
examined and embarrassed.
The control of prostitution as established by the Contagious Diseases
Acts of 1864, 1866 and 1869, however, constituted a decided infringement
on personal liberty. Areas heavily inhabited by soldiers were subjected to
this law, under which any woman merely suspected of prostitution could be
compelled by the police to submit to a physical examination. If found to be
diseased, they could be confined to hospital up to ninety days. Enforcement
tended to be brutal and arbitrary and only after several tragic injustices had
been committed were the laws repealed.48While prostitution flourished in
nineteenth century London, there were inconsistent figures on the number
of women who made their livelihood from the trade. They ranged from
10,000 to 200,000, and 80,000 may be nearly correct.49
The appearance of local and international trafficking in prostitution as a
substantial problem among the Jews during the 1880s coincided with a surge
of reforming energy in England which extended into the sphere of sexual
morals. A sensational agitation, initiated by W. T. Stead's newspaper series,
"The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon," made it public knowledge that
young girls were bought and sold for prostitution, even by their parents, and
were frequently transported abroad for that career.50Under the Criminal
Law Amendment Act of 1885 (48 & 49 Victoria ch. 69) procuring or keeping
girls under sixteen as prostitutes, or being their customers, became an
offense, and a felony when the girl had not reached her thirteenth birthday.
The difficulties of proof in court were substantially eased by admitting the
48. Judith Walkowitz, "'We Are Not Beasts of the Field': Prostitution and the Poor in
Plymouth and Southampton under the Contagious Diseases Act," in Mary S. Hartman and
Lois Banner, eds., Clio's ConsciousnessRaised: New Perspectiveson the History of Women(New
York, 1974), pp. 192-226; Glen Petrie, A Singular Iniquity: The Campaignsof Josephine Butler
(London, 1971).
49. Trudgill, "Prostitution and Paterfamilias"; a careful survey turned up 15,000 open
prostitutes in New York City in 1912, a figure which suggests doubt about the number in Lon-
don, a metropolis of similar magnitude; George J. Kneeland, Commercialized Prostitution in
New York City (New York, 1913), p. 100. Contemporary Germany was no more certain, esti-
mating the number of its prostitutes between 100,000 and 200,000 in 1900 and as high as
300,000 in 1914; R. J. Evans, "Prostitution, State and Society in Imperial Germany," Past and
Present 70(1976): 106-29.
50. Stead's personal "purchase" of a young girl for prostitution-whom he did not
touch-was done to show that these things were done, and it cost him a term in jail. This epi-
sode furnished the basis for G. B. Shaw's "Pygmalion"-see especially the lines spoken by
Alfred P. Doolittle in Act II--and in turn for the musical play "My Fair Lady."
girl to testify, even if she "does not. . . understand the nature of an oath," as
long as she "understands the duty of speaking the truth" (sec. 4). Landlords
who operated brothels, or knowingly leased dwellings as brothels, as well as
the agents and tenants, became liable to fine and imprisonment. Philan-
thropic, including Jewish, efforts to reform prostitutes under eighteen years
of age were aided by the Act's Section 10, under which not only could a girl's
relatives or guardian secure a court order for her removal from premises
where she was "unlawfully detained for immoral purposes," but also "any
other person" recognized by the court as acting in her interest. Subsequent
legislation was vigorously promoted by the National Vigilance Association,
the organization which embodied in the sphere of sexual morals English
reform and humanitarianism, and also censoriousness. It was founded in
1885 and adorned by eminent names from the clergy and nobility, as well as
the chief rabbi and several leading Jews, while directed by its redoubtable
secretary William A. Coote (1842-1919).51 Their efforts helped to enact an
amendment in 1898 to the Vagrancy Act (61 & 62 Victoria ch. 39), which
made it an offense for a man to solicit for a prostitute or to subsist wholly or
partly from her earnings. The Aliens Act of 1905 allowed expulsion from
England for aliens convicted of offenses connected with prostitution which
were not punishable by fine alone, and by 1913 four hundred persons had
been expelled for trafficking.52
Speaking generally, legislation was directed against child prostitution
and men involved in the trade. The ordinary prostitute could carry on with
little interference, provided she was not noisy about it. But there was enough
law on the books to make life difficult and risky for men who lived from the
prostitute's toil.
Chief Rabbi Hermann Adler observed in later years that around 1880,
"the social evil had not become a disturbing factor in our community." The
change was due "directly to the recrudescence of active Russian persecu-
tions in 1881."53The first report about organized Jewish prostitution con-
nected with recent Jewish immigration came in 1887, when the Jewish
Ladies' Association for Preventive and Rescue Work learned from a Chris-
51. Bristow, Vice and Vigilance,pp. 106-19 and passim; William A. Coote, ed., A Romance
of Philanthropy (London, 1916) tells of Coote's life and the National Vigilance Association,
while his A Visionand Its Fulfillment(London, 1916) describes the religious vision which direct-
ed him to extend his organization's work into combating the international traffic.
52. JC, July 4, 1913.
53. Jewish InternationalConference,p. 93.
tian social worker,Mrs. Cooper, that "twentyto thirty Russian,Polish or

German Jewesses (to say nothing of the Christiangirls) haunted and
throngedabout the [East India]dock gates. Severalhouses are filled with
them."54The Association, as well as the rector of Stepney and then
Delegate Chief Rabbi HermannAdler, shocked by the crassnessof the
soliciting,proddedthe police to act. Soon the vicinitywas clearedof the
nuisance.A substantialnumberof Yiddish-speakingprostitutesand traf-
fickerswerecarryingon in the port and navalcenterof Portsmoutharound
the same time, but a vigorouseffort by the local Jews suppressedthem.55
The Jewish Ladies'Association,like its largerpartnerthe National Vigi-
lance Association,was foundedin 1885.One founderrecalledthe immedi-
ate causeas the plightof two repentantJewishprostituteswho did not desire
a Christianrefuge,but found no place for themselvesin any Jewishinstitu-
tion.56Internationaltraffickingfirst came to the ladies' attentionin 1890,
when the Rev. Dr. A. Lowy presenteda memorandum"concerningthe
abominabletraffic in young Jewish girls, taken from Austria, Rumania,
Galicia to Constantinople,"and also "constantlycarriedon betweenEng-
land and Buenos Aires."In responsethe ladies sent notices to European
Jewishnewspapers,"warningyoung girls from leavingtheir homes by the
adviceof strangersor underthe careof strangers."57
"An importantcase of abduction,"thatof FannyE. discussedabove,led
to "a long discussion... uponwhatinternationalmeasuresmightbe adopt-
ed for the suppressionof the WhiteSlaveTrade."58 The trafficitselfwaswell
establishedby then,with its centersaidto be in the EastEndof Londonand
"entirelyin the hands of foreigners."One such foreignerwho sailed for
BuenosAireswiththree"Polish"girlscould not be stopped,andothertraf-
fickersweredoing likewise.59One informantprovidedthe addressof a man
in the East End, "who travelledregularlybetween Englandand Buenos
Aires,takinggirls over."60As a decoyintendedto win the girls'confidence,
he obtained marriagelicenses. Similarly,two women were reported"fre-
quentpassengersto & fromBuenosAires,that on going out theretheywere
54. JLA, Report, 1889-1890, pp. 16-17.

55. Jewish InternationalConference,p. 141 (the Rev. I. Phillips of Portsmouth).
56. Constance Lady Battersea (n6e Rothschild), Reminiscences (London, 1922), pp.
418-23.
57. JLA, Minutes, April 25, 1890. The "Urgent Warning" to "Representatives of Jewish
Communities and Heads of Families," was published in VR, August, 1891, pp. 80-81.
58. JLA,Gentlemen's Committee, Report of Honorary Secretary for 1891 (MS, in Minutes).
59. National Vigilance Association, Fifth Annual Report of Executive Committee, 1890, p.
35.
60. JLA, Gentlemen's Committee, Minutes, May 31, 1896.
accompaniedby younggirlsbut that on the returntheycamebackalone."61

A case which reachedthe courtsin 1890shedslight on the tradeas car-
ried on at that time. Amelia Hyman of Lodz was persuadedby Solomon
Balberski,35, and Jacob Schlamowitz,40, both hairdressersin London,to
come there and marrySchlamowitz.These two, togetherwith a third per-
son, one Lefcovitch,met the girl and promptlytook her substantialsavings
of ?15 for safekeeping.Actually Balberski,who was himself married,
deposited the money in a bank under his own name. They next took
Amelia's clothing and personal belongingsand having her in their grip,
attemptedrepeatedlyto seduceher. She held them off, until a man named
Wolf Levisohnsomehow appearedon the scene as the rescuer.Levisohn
instigatedthe girl to have Balberskiand Schlamowitzarrested(Lefcovitch
disappearedfrom the picture), and the Gentlemen'sCommittee of the
JewishLadies'Associationenteredthe case. It was decidednot to proceed
under the CriminalLaw AmendmentAct, possibly because the girl had
passedhereighteenthbirthdayor the two miscreantswerenot actuallykeep-
ing a brothel.WhenAmeliaHymandeclinedto withdrawher complaintin
return for getting back her belongings,there apparentlywas a civil suit
besidesa criminalcase. "Onlyon its beingpointedout to herthat she should
let the whole storyof the attemptsmadeagainstherto be publiclyknown,as
her doing so might save other girls from a like danger"did she agree to
testify "of the more painful portions of the matter."The prosecutionwas
thorough, with seventeenwitnessescalled and ?150 spent. Her sponsors
were pleasedwith "the successwith which she stood a most severecross-
examinationpromptedby the prisonerswho were in the best position to
haveknownif therehad beenanythingdiscreditablein herpastcareer."The
two menwerefoundguiltyof conspiringto obtain,and of obtaining,Amelia
Hyman'smoneyby false pretensesand with intentionto defraud.Schlamo-
witz, the supposedbridegroom,was sentencedby the Recorderof London
at CentralCriminalCourtto five monthsat hardlabor,whileBalberskiwas
dealt with severely,receivingfive yearsat penalservitude.62
WhatSchlamo-
61. Ibid., June 7, 1896.

62. The Times, May 27, 1890, p. 12; JLA, Gentlemen's Committee, Minutes, March 30,
April 8, April 9, April 17, May 11, May 19, June 3, July 6, 1890. The foreman of Balberski's
jury believed that the sentence was too severe; ibid., July 28, 1890. A private collection raised a
substantial sum to cover the expenses of the case and to provide for Amelia Hyman personally.
She was also furnished with a testimonial attesting her high character, and she then disappears
from sight. Schlamowitz reappeared upon his release from prison, when he threatened to maim
Levison and was warned sharply by the police, to whom the JLA turned; ibid., December 18,
1892 and February 19, 1893.
witz and Balberski attempted was one of the standard techniques for entic-
ing girls into prostitution, but it was foiled by their intended victim's un-
usual courage and determination. To help in locating a girl named Heia
Geneindel, who somehow disappeared on board a Hamburg-London
steamer, Delegate Chief Rabbi Hermann Adler wrote to the rabbi of Radom
at the Association's request. The latter, however, could do nothing without
her passport picture. Meanwhile "her friends in Poland fear she has been
taken to South America."63In other cases, the Jewish Association declined
to intervene against men about whom girls and women made complaints of
assault or theft. The implied reason is that these were "undeserving" persons
who had compromised themselves and whose testimony would not hold up.
The operations of an international trafficker are illuminated by the case
of Marcus Weinbart, a Rumanian Jew aged 55, who was brought to trial in
1896 at Liverpool Assizes. His confederate, one Adolph, was still at large.
Weinbart arrived in Liverpool from Buenos Aires during November, 1895,
and there met Adolph. This Adolph then left for the Continent, and
returned a month later with two "respectable young girls," aged 20 and 21,
from "country districts in Austria." Their names were Kurkowaskae and
Bendriola (also given as Bendziola), and they were probably not Jewish.
Weinbart gave Adolph "a handful of gold." The girls overheard the two
men speaking of further trips to and from South America and of girls to be
brought there, until Weinbart hushed Adolph. The defendant and the two
girls lodged four days in the same room in Copperas Hill. He bought them
cheap clothes, promising that they would be finely dressed in Buenos Aires.
"You will have to look nice, because gentlemen will come to see you at
night." Adolph came to a certain "emigration agent," to say he was going to
Vienna, while Weinbart, claiming the two girls were his daughters, gave the
same agent money to buy tickets to Buenos Aires. However, the girls took
fright, fled the house, and went to the police. At Weinbart's trial, they both
testified in an unspecified language by means of a translator.
During the trial, one of the girls said she had been told that in Buenos
Aires she would meet a friend from home who had left there six months
earlier than they had. The defense argued that Weinbart, as well as Adolph,
were ordinary, legitimate businessmen who were merely casual acquain-
63. Ibid., July 6, 1890; Honorary Secretary's report for 1890, in ibid., February 8, 1891;
Adler to A. R. Moro, July 10, 1890, and to Rabbi [Samuel Mohilever] of Radom, July 15, 1890,
in Chief Rabbi's Archives, Office of the Chief Rabbi, Woburn House, London, Letter Copy
Book, vol. 34, nos. 3332, 3435.
tances. Jurors should "not allow themselves to assume too much against the
Jewish fraternity.... Jews were engaged in commerce all over the world;
there was a spirit of brotherhood among them which was unknown to any
other race . . ." Nevertheless Weinbart was found guilty of attempting to
procure for prostitution abroad, in violation of the Criminal Law Amend-
ment Act, and went to prison for a year at hard labor.64
Eleven years later, Louis Gold, 27, a carpenter, and Harry Cohen, 24, a
tailor, were sentenced to fifteen and twelve months' hard labor, respectively,
for procuring two East End Jewish girls to become prostitutes abroad. They
had sailed from Liverpool to Buenos Aires, only to be refused permission to
land and sent back. A third girl who was almost taken gave information
about them, and upon their return they were arrested. A police inspector
testified that they had carried on as traffickers four or five years. Under the
terms of the Aliens Act of 1905, the two men were sentenced to deportation
upon the completion of their imprisonment.65
Not all procuring was for export. In Manchester, a cabinet maker named
Morgenstern, his wife, and a shopkeeper named Lewis, sought to make a
prostitute of nineteen year old Dora. The girl had refused Mrs. Morgen-
stern's offers to make her an "independent lady" and to "bring in gentlemen
to her." One evening, however, the woman met Dora as she left work, took
her to supper, and persuaded her to come with her and the two men by train
to Liverpool. Then commenced the attempt to seduce Dora. The four
people vainly roamed about, seeking a hotel which would allow Dora and
Lewis to occupy one room. Meanwhile, Dora's mother "acting on some-
thing she heard," sent her son to Liverpool, where he located his sister shar-
ing a room for the night with the Morgenstern woman. Dora went home,
and the three conspirators went to jail for eighteen months.66
Another method could ensnare a girl and paradoxically it was marriage.
This was the shtile khupe, a clandestine, unregistered form of Jewish mar-
riage. Someone promulgated a ketubbah, which later on disappeared, and
there were presumably benedictions, wine, a ring, and witnesses. In fact,
there was some presumption of validity to this marriage in Jewish law,
although none at all in those countries where marriage had to be not only
religiously but also civilly performed.
64. LiverpoolDaily Post, March 26, 1896, p. 3; March 31, 1896, p. 3.

65. The Times, April 29, 1907, p. 4; JAPG&W, Report, 1907, pp. 26-27; the two men and
their trade were excoriated in JC, May 3, 1907, p. 3.
66. LiverpoolDaily Post, August 8, 1899, p. 3.
In England, where a Jewish marriage performed under the jurisdiction of

the chief rabbi was certified civilly to the Registrar's office, it was also pos-
sible to contract a civil marriage at the Registrar's office, followed, if
desired, by a religious marriage performed by a functionary who stood out-
side the chief rabbi's jurisdiction. The furtive shtile khupe, a religious with-
out a civil marriage, imitated Eastern Europe where Jewish marriages were
solely religious, without civil registration. The loose limits of information
and communication made dishonest marriage easier to perpetrate there than
in the West.67 "Irregular marriages" in England disturbed the chief rab-
binate and the Board of Deputies. They reported in 1892 "a great many"
taking place. "Such marriages, being known to those who conduct them to
be unlawful, are performed in a secret and sinister manner, and every pos-
sible means is adopted to prevent the actors being traced." One virtuoso
married nine women in turn, "each of these nine marriages being mere idle
forms of enabling the conscious perpetrator of the villainy to discard at his
pleasure his innocent and unhappy victims."68The president of the Board of
Deputies, Arthur Cohen (1829-1914), who was one of the foremost lawyers
of his time, sought to promote a bill to make "irregular Jewish marriages"
illegal. However; the proposal was attacked as a measure to extend further
the authority of the Chief Rabbinate and to penalize the innocent errors of
immigrant Jews, and it had to be dropped.69
Yet a girl might see "nothing wrong in the proposal of a 'Stille Chuppa,'
which is probably the commencement of her downfall."70She believed her-
self lawfully married. Actually she was at the mercy of her putative husband,
who could force her more easily into prostitution and live upon her earnings
in the street. Likely as not, he abandoned her in time, and she might be a
deserted wife in Jewish law ('agunah), with a child who was illegitimate in
the eyes of the law of the land. Otherwise she might be dragged along by him
and he could sell her in Argentina to a brothel and return to Eastern Europe
to repeat the operation. On one occasion, a girl was rescued from a room
she had been locked in, preparatory to a shtile khupe to be followed by
departure for Buenos Aires.71 The Jewish Association reported that the
"marriage question remains our chief difficulty. The 'stille chuppah' is a
67. Lloyd P. Gartner, The Jewish Immigrantin England 1870-1914, 2d ed. (London, 1973),
pp. 177-78, 184;Jewish InternationalConference,pp. 94-96.
68. Board of Deputies Archives, B2/13/2.
69. Gartner, Jewish Immigrant,p. 178, n. 30.
70. JAPG&W,Report, 1907, p. 22.
71. Ibid., pp. 23-24.
temptationwhichone can understandfor the lonelyorjoylessgirl,who sees

no likelihood of her young man providingthe necessaryfunds for a more
publicceremony."72
Suchmarriageswere"at one periodverycommon"but "practicallydis-
appeared"by 1910.They persisted,accordingto Dayan Moses Hyamson,
only as "the direct consequenceof illegal 'Gittin."' A few rabbis-three
were cited before the Royal Commissionon Divorce and Matrimonial
Causes-gave Jewishdivorcesunreciprocatedby the law of the land, and
theirnumber"is decidedlyon the increase."Remarriagefollowingclandes-
tine divorcealso hadto be clandestine,andthe defenselessnessof the woman
"does in many cases lead to prostitution,"accordingto Hyamson.After
hearingthe testimonyof ChiefRabbiAdler, D. L. Alexander,and H. S. Q.
Henriques,the majorityof the Royal Commissionrecommendeda penalty
againstany personissuinga Jewishdivorceexceptafterdecreeof divorceby
a court.73
However, the readiestsource of girls for the prostitute'scareermust
have been confused,frightenedgirlimmigrants.Unaccompaniedgirls land-
ing at the Port of Londonwerein fact the favoritepreyof traffickers.From
1890through1897,theirnumberaveraged312yearly.74From 1899through
1906,the annualaverageleapsto 806, and from 1907through1913it settles
back to 695. The peak years are 1902and 1903with 1,021and 1,089girls
respectively.The proportionof unaccompaniedgirlsto the total numberof
steeragepassengerson the ships which brought them, ranges in random
fashionfrom approximately3 percentto 12percent.It may be moresignifi-
cant that the ups and downs in the numberof unaccompaniedgirl immi-
grantsdoes not follow the fluctuationsof Jewishimmigrationgenerally,nor
does one detectan inverserelationship.75 About 80 percentto 90 percentof
72. JAPG&W,Report, 1909, p. 65.

73. Jewish International Conference, pp. 101-3; Royal Commission on Divorce and
Matrimonial Causes, Report (Cd. 6478, 1912), pp. 142-44; Minutes of Evidence, vol. III (Cd.
6481, 1912), Qq. 41384, 41395 (H. Adler), 41467, 41473, 41477 (D. L. Alexander). There were
views within the Jewish community strongly opposed to this recommendation, which was pub-
lished during the interval between Adler's death in 1911 a few months after he had testified, and
J. H. Hertz's installation as his successor in 1913. One possible "divorce" is in JAPG&W, Report,
1912, p.44.
74. There are no figures for 1892, when the port was closed most of the year on account of
epidemic. The 1890 total includes 36 girls who were not met at the dock but came to the shelter
on their own.
75. These figures and those which follow are drawn from the annual reports of JAPG&Wand
its predecessor, the JLA.
the girls were listed as "Russians" at first, and later more exactly as "Rus-
sians and Poles." The remainder, except perhaps 3 percent, were "Ger-
mans," "Rumanians," and "Austrians"-the latter probably Galicians and
Hungarians. The girls were young. A small proportion, around 3 percent,
were children under fourteen.76The median age stood around twenty:
Age 1906 1907 1908 1909 1910 1911 1912

Under16 78 78 53 88 54 46 35
16-20 402 298 229 283 309 219 221
Over20 326 338 339 305 336 276 261
(It is difficult to explain the substantial discrepancy between the unaccom-

panied girls and the division by age provided in other tables of the same
reports. Quite a few Christians were among the former, and probably not
the latter.) Unaccompanied, however, did not necessarily mean alone.
Youthful brothers, sisters and friends often traveled together without adults.
Boats to London usually came from Hamburg. They tied up at Tilbury
down the Thames, at Blackwall near the East End, or in midstream and then
landed their passengers in small boats. Tilbury passengers disembarked and
proceeded by train to Fenchurch Street Station. Boats arriving at Harwich
often contained transmigrants who traveled by train directly to Liverpool.
Many, however, traveled to London by train, arriving at the Liverpool
Street Station at the border of the East End. There was no Ellis Island for
immigrants in England.
At any of these landing places and railroad stations, immigrants were
liable to be annoyed, cheated, and robbed. The manifold methods employed
by the crimps, sharks, and runners have been described.77Beginning in 1885
a representative of the Poor Jews' Temporary Shelter met the boats and
shielded their steerage passengers from molestation. In the same year, the
Jewish Ladies' Association also began ministering at dockside to the most
vulnerable element among the immigrants, the unaccompanied girls. Their
agent, bearing a badge in English and Yiddish, was allowed to be the first to
board the vessel. Lacking any foreknowledge of arrivals, the organization
76. In 1899 they numbered 25 of 655; in 1900, 25 of 775; in 1901, 18 of 751; in 1902, 42 of
1,021; in 1903, 45 of 1,089.
77. Gartner, Jewish Immigrant,pp. 34, 35.
paid to have a telegram from Gravesend provide an hour or two of advance

notice. Even so, before 1900 a small percentage of ships was not met. Then a
second and ultimately a third agent entered the service.
The critical moment came when the boat docked. A description of
Jewish inspectors' work at its full development is provided in 1911:
Our inspectorsattend the arrivalof everyboat which carriespassengers

fromthe Continentinto the LondonDocks, and also all the Continentaltrains
which arriveat LiverpoolStreetStation.Theyweara badgeupon whichthe
name and purposeof this associationis writtenin Hebrew[letters,i.e., Yid-
dish] and English.Theygo amongstthe passengersand ascertainwhichgirls
aretravellingalone.Thecaptainsandofficerson board,andthe officialsat the
dock, advisethe girlsto trustour inspectors.Theylearnwherethegirlswishto
go, and offerto helpand conductthemto theirdestinations.At the sametime
thosegirlswho aretravellingalonein companyof otherwomen,or of men,are
spokento, and if it is found that they arenot closelyrelated,the girls areper-
suaded to place themselvesin the care of our inspectors.All girls are then
taken from the boat or trainto SaraPykeHouse, wherethey are againinter-
viewedby the LadySuperintendent and the Inspector,and if the addressesin
theirpossessionprovesatisfactory,they are takento them, afterfull particu-
lars have been enteredin our records.In cases wherethere is no address,or
where the addressis that of an undesirableperson or house, the facts are
explainedto the girls, and she is offeredthe protectionof the Home, which
is veryrarelyrefused.Thesestepsareverynecessary,as it oftenshappensthat
girls are given addressesen route, to so-called respectablehouses, by un-
scrupulouspeople, or are recommendedto personswhom they do not know
andwho exploitthemfor theirown purposes.78
The entire procedure had the indispensable cooperation of the railroads

and steamship lines. Suspicious individuals accompanying girls always gave
up and vanished when they failed to persuade the Jewish agent that they had
a legitimate relationship to the girls. "The vigilance displayed by the
[Jewish] officers has thoroughly disturbed the traffic," declared the Jewish
Association with pride.79Having the police at hand explains why the Jewish
Association's agents were not assaulted and harassed by their quarry.
No system could reckon with, much less check, every instance of human
78. JAPG&W,
Report, 1911, pp. 74-75.
79. JAPG&W,
Report, 1906, p. 25.
frailty or malevolence, especially during the earlier years of antiprostitution

efforts. To cite some examples reported in 1901:
Case31.-Aged 24. Arrivedin Londonin companyof a trafficker.Upon hear-

ing of herdangershe lefthim,andwasescortedto hersister'shome.
Case 32.-Aged 23. Was seenin the streetsin companyof the sametrafficker
referredto above. The girl was warned,but hesitatedto believe.We took her
to see the girl in Case 31, and upon hearingherstoryshe consented,andgave
up the man.
Case No. 82.-Aged 19.-Induced to leave her home by a woman who
promisedhergood workin England.Upon arrivalthegirlwas met,takencare
of, and ultimatelysent home by us. Her travellingcompanionprovedto be
connectedwith a gang of traffickers.Therewas not sufficientevidencefor
prosecution.
Case No. 26.-Aged 16. Arrivedfrom Russia in the companyof a woman
whose acquaintanceshe had madeon thejourney,and who had taken all her
money.She was takencareof by us, her moneywas restored,and ultimately
we handedheroverto herfatherin London.80
The great majority of the unaccompanied girls desired simply to join

relatives or friends in London or the Provinces. They were escorted to the
local addresses if those were respectable. But when they were in the Jewish
Association's carefully kept black book the girl was warned and urged not
to go there. She was taken there if she repeatedlyinsisted, and the escort then
told the inhabitants of the house that the Jewish Association and the police
had an eye on them. Frequently, addresses were lost en route, out of date, or
so garbled that they did not make sense, for example:
EngleumanoWidnes
Ckrnwelstri
No. 64 piten
Cudrewieze.81
The Jewish Association's agents became quite skillful in reading the un-
readable.
Often frustrated at the docks, traffickers and their accomplices resorted
to the simpler method of giving the addresses of supposed lodging houses to
unsuspecting girls on board ship. These were brothels or linked with
80. JAPG&W,Report, 1901, pp. 49-53.

81. JAPG&W,Report, 1903, p. 26.
brothels, as the girl who lodged there learned when she was importuned to
become a prostitute and was probably robbed of her belongings. A case in
1901 may illustrate the vagaries of addresses, reputable and otherwise:
Case 74. This girl (aged 19) was followed from Antwerpby traffickers,and
was seen by our officeron arrivalat a London RailwayStationin the com-
pany of two men. On being questionedthey producedthe addressto which
theyintendedto takeher.Ourofficerseeingthat it was one whichis on our list
of suspectedhouses,warnedthe girl and askedif she had any friendin Lon-
don. The men insistedon takingthe girl with them, so our officerfollowed.
Then one man ran away, and the other seeingthat our officerstill persisted,
allowedthe girl to go with him. Shewas takento our home,andthenceto her
friends,who wereverygratefulfor the protectionaccorded.82
Jewish traffickers and prostitutes tended to quit the East End of London.
Streets where brothels had abounded became centers of Jewish immigrant
settlement, and the disreputable inhabitants were forced out.83Yet "houses
of evil repute" were still conspicuous around 1905.84 Those who left
removed to Soho, where prostitution became predominantly foreign. Cer-
tain streets around Piccadilly were the particular resort of prostitutes from
abroad. Police officials even compared the foreign with the native brand,
finding the former "more shameless and persistent," and the latter more
drunken and disorderly.85
The Yiddish poet Morris Rosenfeld (1862-1923) sentimentally sympa-
thized with these girls:
In Englandiz do a shtot Lester In Englandthereis a towncalledLeicester

In Londoniz do aza skver In Londonthereis sucha square
Dort shteyenshtendigdray Threesistersalwaysstandthere
shvester
Verkenzey nit, ver,nit ver? Who doesn'tknowthem,who doesn't?
Di eltstefarkoyftdortblumen Theeldesttheresellsflowers
Di mitelstebendlekhfarshikh The middleone, shoelaces,
Di yungste,oy vey, di yungste Theyoungest,0, the youngest,
Handelt,oy vey, mit zikh. Shesells,0, she sellsherself.
82. JAPG&W, Report, 1901, p. 19.

83. Royal Commission on Alien Immigration, Minutes of Evidence (Cd. 1742, 1903), Qq.
8254, 10166-99.
84. JAPG&W,Report, 1905, p. 35.
85. Royal Commission on Alien Immigration, Qq. 12617, 13001-6, 10694.
The mundane records of the Jewish Association for the Protection of

Girls and Women suggest the extent of Jewish involvement in prostitution.
The categories devised for its detailed, informative annual reports include
missing girls who were found "in unsatisfactory surroundings" (below,
column 1) as well as missing girls "not found" (below, column 2) and quite
possibly transported abroad or inhabiting a London brothel. "Many com-
plaints" reached the police concerning Jewish girls disappearing from the
East End.86Some girls were "traced and found to be leading immoral lives
(unable to ascertain whether willingly or not)" (below, column 3). Also
reported were "houses and people suspected of carrying on, or profiting by,
the White Slave Traffic" (below, column 4).
The figures for the years available are illuminating:
1 2 3 4
Unsatisfactory Missing, Immoral Trafficking
Surroundings Not found Lives
1902 not given 10 37 45
1905 5 18 30 39
1906 30 9 34 29
1907 25 15 58 29
1908 50 5 53 46
1909 40 6 44 28
1910 57 17 57 36
1911 75 9 55 48
1912 77 32 95 78
1913 87 41 32 51
There is little doubt, however, that many more prostitutes and traf-
fickers were active than the Jewish community knew of. Noone is known to
have ventured an estimate at the time, and perhaps it is hardly worthwhile to
make the attempt now. Yet there might have been nearly one thousand Jews,
men and women, who found more or less full employment in the traffic, and
their faces changed all the time. It is clear that as a Jewish social problem the
traffic in prostitution was not overwhelming, yet not at all negligible. But it
was disgraceful and embarrassing.
Antialien agitators and anti-Semites began to make capital of the subject
86. The Times, April 29, 1907, p. 4.

as early as 1892. The menace to British morals from immigrant Jewish pros-
titutes and traffickers became one of their stock themes.87Arnold White,
the most talented of the agitators and one of the most assiduous, added
sexual immorality to the calamities which alien Jews were inflicting upon his
England. When he inquired of the Metropolitan Police in 1907, the Chief
Clerk, besides enlightening him about the terms used in the trade, assured
White that there was no central traffickers' organization. "The recruits are
chiefly of French, German, and Belgian nationalities."88Nevertheless, it was
believed that White, undaunted by police information, was the author of a
mendacious newspaper series in 1911, "The Problem of the Alien," meaning
90 percent Jews, which included a piece on the alien's evil moral influence.
The alien Jew, as a member of a physically and mentally inferior race, was
guilty of "immorality in its most abominable forms." He was "a keeper of
gambling halls and disorderly houses, a procurer and a bully.... Procuring
for the 'white slave' trade, and living upon the earnings of women, are now
two of the regular professions of the alien Jew."89The secretary of the Jewish
Association's Gentlemen's Committee, supported by W. A. Coote's evi-
dence, pronounced White's statement "a deliberate falsehood."90However,
White and other antialiens and anti-Semites were not to be silenced. In the
struggle to influence public opinion, the disturbing truth had to be accepted
that Jews figured prominently among the traffickers and, if slightly less so,
among prostitutes. Combating the traffic was not only a matter of morals
and philanthropy but also of protecting the good name of the Jews.
The question inevitably arose why Jewish girls turned to the prostitute's
career. In certain cases they were inducted into the trade by the atmosphere
in their families. It appears likely that most prostitutes quit their trade and
married after their prime years were past. The sexual undertones in many
such homes would have nudged susceptible daughters toward the traffic.
While some girls sought to leave, or were removed from, the corrupting
influence of parents, uncle, sister, brother-in-law, or some other relative,
there can be little doubt that others stayed on and became prostitutes.91
87. Colin Holmes, Anti-Semitism in British Society 1876-1939 (London, 1979), pp. 44-46.
88. C. L. Bathurst to White, January 21, 1907; Arnold White Papers, Folder WHI/53,
National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.
89. TheStandard, January 30, 1911, p. 7.
90. S. Cohen to C. H. L. Emanuel, Board of Deputies, in Board of Deputies Archives,
B2/1/9.
91. JLA, Report, 1888-1889, p. 8; JAPG&W,Reports, 1901, pp. 50-52; 1905, pp. 18, 21; 1906,
p. 31; 1908, p. 31; 1912, pp. 44, 45, 55; 1913, p. 56.
Other answers could give little comfort, since they reflected upon conditions
of Jewish life, or upon the social order itself which liberal bourgeois Jewish
philanthropy felt unable to touch, much less change.
There were conditions about the life of working girls in a great city which
led Jewish no less than Christian girls toward prostitution. Perhaps the
foreign, lonely Jewish girl suffered greater hardship than did the native Bri-
tish. "Slackness of work, especially in the seasonal trades" was blamed, and
also "the terrible poverty of some, the dearth of work for willing hands, the
ill-health and utter friendlessness."92Communal workers emphasized "a
quarrel at home, slackness of work, lack of proper amusements, and some-
times, nay, often the inability of the parents" to deal with their children.93
Restless, unhappy girls and reckless young men could meet in "some of the
'restaurants' in the East End and Soho districts ... which are nothing more
than gambling dens and houses of assembly for men and women engaged in
this nefarious traffic."94The young man might "'treat' them in cafes and
restaurants, and by the promise of marriage or by other inducements, bring
about their downfall. The rest is easy for them. After her fall, the girl,
ashamed to face her parents, does not like to return home." Soon she
becomes a streetwalker.95The Jewish Association had "reason to fear that
there are organized gangs who are always searching for young and helpless
victims," and it urged the Yiddish press, rabbis, and friendly societies in the
East End to publicize these facts as a warning.96
The social sources of the Jewish traffic in prostitution and its practices
are illustrated by the case of Joe Anker, "James Smith," and their confeder-
ates, who were tried early in 1898 for attempted trafficking. Fourteen
months earlier, Anker had appeared at the Jewish Association's Sara Pyke
House where he virtuously informed the matron "that a woman named
Some Firestein, living at 134 Stamford St. Waterloo Road [one of London's
centers of prostitution] had recently got hold of 6 girls whom she obliged to
go on the streets. One of these girls had been at S. P. House."97The quarrel
between Anker and the Firestein woman was patched up, because they were
92. JAPG&W, Report, 1912, pp. 24, 76.

93. JAPG&W, Report, 1912, p. 29.
94. JAPG&W, Report, 1907, p. 22.
95. JAPG&W, Report, 1911, p. 28.
96. JAPG&W, Reports, 1908, pp. 15-16; 1911, p. 42; 1912, p. 52.
97. JAPG&W, Gentlemen's Committee, Minutes, November 8, 1896. The committee decided
to investigate, but nothing further is on record.
charged together, along with Jacob Shrednecki, 26, a tailor, and Simon
Kuncher, 22, a jewelry dealer. All gave Soho addresses. The offense alleged
against them was "unlawfully administering spirits of wine and beer to Toba
G**, 17 years of age, and to Fanny R**, 151/2years old, so as to stupefy
them for an unlawful purpose." "All the persons concerned in the case were
Jews of foreign nationality," and the judge refused to allow bail for any of
them.98 Maurice Silvermann, 25, living in the East End and described as a
leather merchant, was added to the case on the charge of having procured
the girls, and "James Smith" was also charged.
Toba had been in England eighteen months, and Fanny, six months;
both testified in Yiddish through an interpreter. The younger girl was living
in Commercial Road with a guardian, and elsewhere in London she had a
brother who lived with their stepbrother and his wife. This brother,
Auscher, once came to see her and her visiting friend Toba, and took them
out to the street to meet the stepbrother, who was with Shrednecki and
Kuncher. They all repaired to the stepbrother's house, where his wife served
spirits. Kuncher then displayed a marquise and declared to Toba, "I desired
to be married to you." He probably intended a mock Jewish marriage, to
delude the girl that they were genuinely married. The scene of activity then
transferredto the house managed by Anker and the Firestein woman where,
stimulated by liquor, relations continued between the two girls and the two
men, until Fanny's guardian learned what was afoot and took action.9
The implications of this squalid little tale are clarified by the charge
against "James Smith, 29, described as a draper, of American nationality,
living at St. Mark's street, Aldgate," for conspiring with Anker and Fire-
stein "to procure one Rachel L* for an immoral purpose... ." The girl
worked as a button-hole maker, one of the worst paid jobs in the clothing
industry, and was in England six months. She was introduced by a fellow
lodger to Smith and Anker, and after some meetings and drinks, Smith
offered her marriage and induced her to move into the American Hotel, a
brothel in the Waterloo Road area. On the first morning Smith raped
Rachel, but she stayed on with him at the place for two weeks. He, Anker,
and Feierstein answered the girl's request for money by demanding, with
words and blows, that she go on the streets, which she refused to do.'00It is
98. The Times, February 8, 1898, p. 4.

obvious that the three susceptible girls, none of them living with their
family, were being recruited for prostitution by skillful operators. James
Smith was the alias of Joe Silver, which was the alias of Joseph Lis, a native
of Kielce in Poland who had emigrated thence to the United States in 1885.
He settled in Pittsburgh, where he served a term for burglary, and then in
New York, where as Joe Silver, he became a citizen and an agent of the
Parkhurst investigation into police corruption. In 1895 Lis-Silver quit the
United States for England. There, as James Smith, he commenced a long
career as a fence and trafficker, which led him to British and German South
Africa and to the Continent.'10
"Smith's" case was joined to that of the others, and their trial, which was
held before the Common Serjeant of London in Old Bailey, lasted three
days. A solicitor "watched the case on behalf of certain persons interested in
it," quite possibly the Jewish Association. It ended in acquittal, probably
because the defendants, each of whom was "a competent but not compel-
lable witness," did not testify and the girls' testimony was not sufficient.
"The details of the case were unsuitable for publication," The Times
found.'02
The three defendants were collaborators, not a cohesive gang. They fell
in and fell out with one another as their convenience and unstable moods
dictated. Many such groups carried on. In one case during 1902, a girl was
rescued from a man who "belonged to a gang of bad characters who live by
the earnings of their victims." There was a prosecution, and "during the trial
some of the gang violently assaulted our informant." Two of the assailants
were likewise prosecuted, and convicted.'03Yet, there is no evidence nor any
contemporary allegation that any centrally organized vice ring functioned.
With "amazing cunning" traffickers, who knew one another and frequently
were members of a family, cooperated in a chain which led from Eastern
Europe to brothels overseas.'04 "A girl employed in a factory in Lodz was
induced by a male and female acquaintance to come over here so as to earn
higher wages." She was forced into prostitution and "cruelly beaten" when
she attempted to escape. When she was arrested for soliciting on the streets,
101. I am greatly indebted to Professor Charles Van Orselen, University of Witwatersrand,

Johannesburg, for illuminating information on the career of Lis-Silver-Smith, which provided
the lead to the trial.
102. The Times, April 4, 1898, p. 14; see also March 31, p. 14, and April 1, 1898, p. 14.
103. JAPG&W, Report, 1902, pp. 22-23.
104. JAPG&W, Report, 1902, p. 22.
the girl's case reached the Jewish Association and her captors were then
arrested, convicted, and imprisoned.'05Numerous such cases, and years of
experience at the docks, showed that "the traffickers here must have agents
abroad, for we find that girls come over bringing addresses of houses where
they expect to find hospitality and occupation, but where, instead, they are
snared to their ruin."'06
The range of trafficking and prostitution may be illustrated from the
minutes of one meeting of the Gentlemen's Committee of the Jewish Associ-
ation. The date is July 2, 1899:
... the girl SprinzeF. ... had now come with quitea differentaccountof her
case.Thegirlnow statesherrealnameto be PerlB., that she hadby a so called
"stilleChasne"been marriedin Warsawto the man S., whose real nameshe
saidwas JosselR. & who was a ponce& trafficker.She hadthroughRabbiW.
hereobtaineda divorcefrom R. & sincethen marrieda mancalledJisroelT.,
who hadgone backto Warsaw.
It wassuggestedthat RabbiW. be askedif he had divorcedB. & R.
The . .. Christiangirl Martha P. of Frankfort... had been rescuedin
Verviers.
The furtherdevelopmentof the case of Eva B. was reported.In regardto
the allegedconcealmentof the birthof Eva'schild the Committeedecidedto
assistMr. B., the girl'sfather,if he wishedto takeanyactionin the matter ....
In regardto the case of Rachel C., whose parentskept a brothel at 23
DenmanStreetthe Committeeinstructedthe Sec.... to have Rachel& her
brothers removed from their surroundings& out of the control of their
parentsby an applicationto the Police ....
The Sec. reportedthe case of Leah S. & said that he knew from another
case, that the informantMr. R. the girl'sbrother-in-lawwas connectedwith
the traffickers.
... A full accountwas furthergivenby the Sec. of the casesof RivkaF. &
ChajeJ. The two girls upon arrivalat S[ara]P[yke]H[ouse,home for work-
ing girls] had shown an addressto StamfordStreet but were taken to an
address,22 JaneStr., E. whicha country-womanof one of the girlswho hap-
pened to be just then at S.P.H.gave as that of the girls' relatives.Whenthe
Assn'svisitor,Miss Levy,calledat 22 JaneStr.,Mrs.M. deniedall knowledge
of the girls. Incidentallythe Sec. Dr. Fr[iedberger]heard of the girls being
missing,he took the case in hand& through[theirinspector]Solomontraced
105. Ibid., p. 24.

106. Ibid., p. 25.
the 2 girls who are now inmatesof brothelshavingpassedthroughdifferent

houseswithina weekof theirbeingin London.. .
... Solomonhad traceda traffickerwho arrivedthis week fromthe Con-
tinentvia Harwichto havetakenhis victimto 4 HannibalRoad,the tenantsof
which house were known to him, the Sec., as thieves,ponces & traffickers.
With regardto anothercase of suspectedtraffickers,who had arrivedherea
few days ago, he the Sec. had sent by wire full informationto the Sec. of the
LiverpoolCommittee,in orderto havethe Bellagiowatched,whichvesselleft
yesterday(July lst) the LiverpoolDocks for B/A [BuenosAires].
Success did not attend all the efforts.
Anglo-JewishAction against the InternationalTraffic
The Jewish community, for moral and philanthropic reasons, concerned

itself with the problem of prostitution, and its efforts were tenacious and
prolonged. The Jewish Ladies' Association for Preventive and Rescue
Work, as we have mentioned, was founded at the apogee of Victorian
reform, in 1885, to meet unaccompanied immigrant girls and women on
immigrant boats, to combat the traffic in prostitution and to help prosti-
tutes seeking to return to decent society. Over the years it established a tem-
porary shelter for newcomers, Sara Pyke House for respectable working
girls, Charcroft House for unmarried mothers and their babies, and a small
"industrial school" for girls removed from disreputable environments.'07
There was a Gentlemen's Committee which commenced to function in 1888,
and took over the services provided at dockside and railway terminals. It
also conducted the campaign against the traffic in prostitution. In 1896, the
organization changed its name to the Jewish Association for the Protection
of Girls and Women. With the wealthy elite of Anglo-Jewry as its sup-
porters and with subsidies from the Jewish Colonization Association, the
JAPG&W was well financed. It cooperated closely with the Travellers'
Aid Society and the National Vigilance Association, and maintained small
local branches in Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, and at the port towns of
Grimsby and Southampton. The NVA'Sfive year campaign which led to
the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1912 (2&3 Geo. 5 ch. 20) had the
vigorous support of the Jewish Association, while the statute itself was
107. A concise statement is in V. D. Lipman, A Centuryof Social Service: The History of the
Jewish Board of Guardians(London, 1959), pp. 247-55.
drafted by D. L. Alexander, K.C., President of the Jewish Board of Depu-

ties. W. A. Coote's international crusade had his personal religious vision as
its inspiration, but much of the practical guidance came from the Jewish
Association, which already had considerable knowledge of the trafficking
problem abroad.'08 The National Vigilance Association, as led by Coote,
took action against literature and performances it deemed indecent, but the
Jewish Association dedicated itself to antiprostitution efforts, with some
attention to girls' personal and family problems. In the eyes of the Jewish
Association, prostitutes were always victims, whether of bad men, poor
upbringing, deficient education, or poverty, and as victims they were to be,
in the term regularly employed, redeemed. There is no known case where the
association prosecuted a prostitute. Nothing in the backgrounds of the men
in the trade, however, served to mitigate the execration heaped upon them
as "vile," "evil," "human vultures," and the like. The Reverend Simeon
Singer, as his son-in-law Israel Abrahams recalled, "would consent to no
condonation of Jewish offenders, but frequently instituted prosecutions."'09
The act of 1912, following the pattern of previous legislation, was aimed at
traffickers rather than prostitutes. It enlarged landlords' responsibility for
premises rented out and used as a brothel, permitted the arrest without war-
rant of suspected procurers, and authorized whipping to be added to the
sentence of convicted procurers.
The Jewish Association for the Protection of Girls and Women was
drawn deeply into combating international trafficking. Great Britain's
geographic position, and her immense maritime commerce which dominat-
ed the world's shipping, meant that most prostitutes for export would pass
through British ports. The international problem was known of by 1890,
and more information constantly came from later reports. The prime desti-
nation of this traffic was Latin America, and Buenos Aires was its main port
of arrival. A report of 1892 suggests the reputation which the city was
acquiring when, in speaking of Colonel Albert E. W. Goldsmid's struggle
against the traffic during his sojourn in Argentina on behalf of the Jewish
Colonization Association, it denounced "the moral miasma that rises from
108. Draft of letter, Hermann Adler to Horace de Guinzberg, St. Petersburg, Chief Rabbi's
Archives (n. 63), vol. 52, no. 4972; Speeches ... at the 'Coming of Age' Celebrationof the Travel-
lers' Aid Society ... 3rd May, 1906, held at Lady Battersea's home; National Vigilance Asso-
ciation, 35th Annual Report, 1920, p. 6; JAPG&W,Reports, 1906, pp. 54-55; 1908, pp. 27-28;
Bristow, Vice and Vigilance,pp. 191-94.
109. The Literary Remains of the Rev. Simeon Singer. Sermons, ed. with a memoir by Israel
Abrahams (London, 1908), pp. xxxi-xxxii.
this land and is indigenous to the soil of South America generally.... The
morality of those settled here (not the recent arrivals from Russia but chiefly
those from Germany and engaged in commerce) is bad beyond description.
A vile traffic has long been the curse of the city, and many a poor Jewess has
been inveigled into it by these beasts in human form.""0 Argentine Jewry
itself treated everyone involved in the traffic as outcasts, but the actual cam-
paign against Jewish commercial prostitution was organized and paid for by
the Jewish Colonization Association and by the Jewish Association in Lon-
don."'
The traffickers' methods of persuasion and deceit to bring Jewish girls
from Europe show that what had to be combated required effort in several
countries.
In July 1900 a prospering young jewelers' agent came to Austria,
probably meaning Galicia, from the United States-so he represented him-
self. He met and properly married the daughter of a respectable family. The
new couple departed for Vienna en route back to the United States, but
when next heard from months later, they were in Buenos Aires. The bride
knew nothing of the traffic in prostitution, but her husband had been unable
to persuade her to go there anyhow, even for the promising business oppor-
tunity which awaited him. He deceived her into embarking on a boat to
Argentina, saying simply its destination was the United States. Once in
Buenos Aires and living in poverty, the woman began to be importuned by
her brother-in-law, a brothel keeper, to go on the streets. He became more
insistent when the husband had to be hospitalized for illness, but she stead-
fastly refused and underwent privation and mistreatment. The young
woman was rescued on account of the appeals to Jewish institutions from
her family in Europe, who were suspicious why she was in Argentina at
all.12 A child she bore her husband belonged to him by law, and had to be
left behind.
Another case reported by the Jewish Association likewise exemplifies the
use of false destination, by more skillful operators:
Whenvisitingone of the Dutchboatsthatcall at Southamptonon theirwayto
110. JC, November 4, 1892. However, an earlier report lays the blame for the traffic mainly
upon new immigrants. JC, August 5, 1887.
111. Haim Avni, Mi-Biltul ha-'inqviziSyahve-'ad hoq ha-shevut (The History of Jewish
Immigration to Argentina) (Jerusalem, 1982), pp. 69-70, 84, 173, 177-78. Yehudah Shuster,
"The Beginning of the Poale Zion Party in Argentina, 1906-1915," seminar paper, Department
of Jewish History, Hebrew University, 1975.
112. JAPG&W, Report, 1901, pp. 26-30.
South America,our representativefound a young marriedwoman accom-

paniedby her husband.The latterwas a very suspiciouslookingperson,and
questionswerethereforeasked,it was found that the wife was quiteunaware
of herdestination.
The girl's father,communicatedwith, said his daughterand her husband
weresupposedto be going to America,and beggedus to rescuehis daughter.
He statedthat this man had spenta greatdeal of moneywhilstin theirvillage
in Russia,andthat he hadevenpaidall the weddingexpensesof an eldersister
of the girl,in orderto get the youngerone.
However, there was no legal basis for preventing the couple from sailing.
The Buenos Aires committee, which was requested to seek them out, could
not trace the husband and wife:
Theydid not arriveat that city, and musthaveleft at an intermediateport.

The man had beenheardto boastthat he had severalwomenwho werebring-
ing himin hundredsof pounds.13
They probably landed at Montevideo or Rio de Janeiro, which substi-

tuted for Buenos Aires when the Argentine port began to inspect arrivals
more strictly after approximately 1901.114
Abduction could also be practiced in London. A fifteen year old girl dis-
appeared in 1898 after she met a man on the street who was seeking girls to
go with him to South Africa as clerks in his business. She was prevailed
upon to steal away from home, and her route led from Waterloo Station to
Southampton to Le Havre. There she was given a ticket not to South Africa
but to Montevideo, and the pair traveled separately on the same boat, "as
someone might be looking for her. The man seemed afraid of something or
other." Upon landing without interference, the girl was taken to a brothel
and sold for ? 100, and was told she had incurred a debt of ? 120 which had
to be worked off. Then she was moved to Buenos Aires, where she found
herself among thirty girls in a brothel who were all working perpetually to
pay off some "debt." The British Consul and the Commissioner of Police
came together to look for her, but she was compelled to misstate her name
and age. Then the Commissioner came alone and succeeded in identifying
her. Once rescued and sent home, she reported that "most girls brought
113. JAPG&W,Report, 1910, p. 46.

114. JAPG&W,Reports, 1901, p. 41; 1903, pp. 35-37; 1905, p. 32; 1907, pp. 32-34; 1911, pp.
36-39.
out to Buenos Aires, come induced by false pretenses, and have no idea of
their fate . . . many being absolutely illiterate and ignorant, became abject
slaves."' 5
The traffic within the British Empire was of particular interest to the
Jewish Association. When Rabbi Joseph H. Hertz (1872-1946) came to
London during the Boer War after stormy years in South Africa advocating
uitlander rights, he reported in private that "the traffic there was almost
exclusively in the hands of Polish & Russian Jews.""16He openly stated that
"of late years the term 'Jewess' had become a byword and a hissing on the
East Coast of Africa. From Delagoa Bay northward to Port Said there must
be some 750 Jewish women (Aden of course excluded)," of whom 95 percent
were prostitutes."7 In Lorenzo Marques, where he went after his expulsion
from Johannesburg by the Boer government, Hertz found only one or two
Jews living with their families. Besides recommending to them that they
establish a synagogue and a cemetery and secure the services of a shobet, the
future Chief Rabbi urged them to set up an antitraffic committee."8 This
advice must have been proffered in heavy irony, since Hertz privately gave
the Jewish Association "his opinion that 70% of all women trafficked came
through Lorenzo Marques.... There were from 60 to 100 Jewish prosti-
tutes in Lorenzo Marques." In other places the state of affairs was also
disreputable:
In Beirathe entireJewishCommunityweretraffickers,also in Salisbury,

wherethe President& the Chasan(Reader)of the communityweretraffickers.
In Bulawayoa good manyJews,about 1/5 of the entirecommunitywereinter-
estedin the traffic.
As to Johannesburg, "there existed a Club, called the American Club,

which consisted of traffickers from New York who if they were not natives
of America had lived there for many years." Hertz could report "that one of
the worst of the gang of traffickers" in Johannesburg, who qualified for the
115. JAPG&W,Report, 1901, pp. 23-26, where Lady Battersea and her cousin Lord Roth-
schild are thanked for their aid, "through whose introductions we gained the active co-
operation of the authorities ...." It is indeed suggestive that the intervention of perhaps the
foremost banker in the world was required to make the Buenos Aires police remove one girl
from a brothel.
116. JAPG&W,Gentlemen's Committee, Minutes, April 22, 1900.
117. JC, February 9, 1900.
118. Ibid.
club, namely "Joe Silver had lately undergone a term of imprisonment in

Johannesburg & had since then gone to the [Orange] Free-State." The
Committee must have nodded in recognition of the man whom the minutes
promptly identified: "[Joe Silver is Joe Lis, alias Abraham Ramer alias
James Smith.]" On the other hand, thanks to a vigilant Jewish chief of police
in Durban, there were hardly any prostitutes in that town. Elsewhere there
were local committees to combat the traffic, some of which were founded
after prodding by the Jewish Association in London and by Chief Rabbi
Adler. '9 White women were scarce in South Africa, and among the Jews,
who largely constituted the commercial class, some were ready to provide
sex as a commodity.
Not all girls who went to Argentina, South Africa or many other places
were unaware of what they were meant to do there. Late in the night of
November 30, 1899, the Secretary of the Jewish Association hurried to
Liverpool "in pursuit of a suspected trafficker Menachem R., who was sail-
ing with 2 young girls, Gitel & Sarah L. by the 'California' for Boston."
Representatives of the organization's Liverpool branch "awaited with a
detective the arrival of the suspected party as well as that of Dr. Friede-
berger in the early hours of the morning. The Police there were also ready to
assist him and anxious to act. But R. and the L. girls having agreed to come
to the Police-station Dr. Friedeberger found he could do no more than
seriously warn the girls of their danger. They, however, would pay no atten-
tion to it."120
Anglo-Jewry Leading an InternationalCampaign
Efforts to combat the Jewish traffic in prostitution within Britain took,

as we have seen, the form of legislation, public and private warnings to girls
and their families, reforming prostitutes, and prosecuting traffickers. Some
of this was done in collaboration with general British efforts. The protection
of immigrant girls arriving unaccompanied or in the company of suspected
men at the docks and railway terminals could help to disrupt the inter-
national as well as the domestic traffic, by breaking the chain which led
from the East European sources of supply to the overseas markets.
119. JAPG&W,Gentlemen's Committee, Minutes, April 22, 1900. On the prostitution traffic
along the South Asian coast and the role of Jews in it, See VR August, 1892, pp. 54-55.
120. JAPG&W, Gentlemen's Committee, Minutes, December 10, 1899.
However, the only sure way to break up the international Jewish traffic was
to eliminate its source of supply, through education and warnings in Eastern
Europe. The girls who were drawn into the traffic came predominantly from
the impoverished masses who still held largely to the traditional forms of life
and values, and whose leaders were rabbis of the traditional cast. West
European Jews who were concerned with the problem of prostitution
deemed it essential to secure the rabbis' cooperation. Better than anyone,
the rabbi could dissuade girls and their families from marriages with young
men who might be agents in the prostitution traffic. East European rabbis,
however, usually played an aloof, honorary role in community affairs and
were seldom active leaders. Few of them would have had much association
with the class from which the girls were usually drawn. Yet their word car-
ried weight, and it was worth soliciting. Especially was this so among Hasid-
im, who regarded their rabbis in more than human terms. Bertha Pappen-
heim succeeding in securing the endorsement of the Aleksandrov rabbi, R.
Samuel Zvi, for her efforts, and the strong sympathy of the Czortkow rabbi
for antitraffic work was also reported.121
Rabbi Ferdinand Rosenthal of Breslau sent a circular to the Galician
rabbis early in the 1890s, urging them to tell their people to beware of
unknown, eligible young men who wished to marry local girls.122
In 1894 the Hamburg Henry Jones lodge of the German Bne Brith com-
menced their efforts in the field, and the organization elsewhere in Germany
followed their lead. They protected girls at Hamburg and other ports, as
well as at railroad stations and border points, and broadcast information in
Eastern Europe concerning the dangers of the traffic. The German Jews did
not refrain, as did the British Jews, from openly publishing the names and
descriptions of male traffickers. On the other hand, they did not maintain
institutions for wayward girls, as did the Jewish Association in London. In
1897, the Henry Jones lodge dispatched a circular letter of warning to rabbis
and lay leaders in Galicia. It cautioned that "many men" who posed as
pious Jews but were evil and sinning, were taking away innocent girls. Such
charges, it added, had appeared in the anti-Semitic press, but unfortunately
were now authenticated by sources of unquestioned veracity. The rabbis and
lay leaders were urged to spread the word among their people. Signers
included leaders of German, Austrian, and Rumanian Bne Brith, represen-
121. Sisyphus-Arbeit,pp. 149-50; Jewish InternationalConference,p. 113.

122. AZJ, July 18, 1902, p. 339.
tatives of the Jewish Association in London, Chief Rabbi Zadoc Kahn

(France) and Rabbis Hildesheimer (Berlin), Markus Hirsch (Hamburg),
Bernhard Ritter (Rotterdam), Selig Auerbach (Halberstadt), and Chaim
Taubes (Botoshan). However, the seeming emphasis on Galicia alone may
have irritated some of the circular's recipients, as some of the proceedings
during the Lemberg conference in 1903 were to show.'23In 1899 yet another
circular went to the rabbis of Eastern Europe and appeared also in the
Hebrew press. Its seven signers included again the chief rabbi of Great
Britain, who was its author, and the chief rabbis of France and the Jewish
communities of Berlin, Vienna, Rome, Frankfurt, and Hamburg.
The sad tidingshavecome to us thatevil menandwomengo aboutin your

countriesfromtown to townandvillageto villageand induceJewishmaidens,
by falserepresentations, to leavetheirnativelandto go, by theiradvice,to dis-
tant countries,telling them they will find theregood and remunerativesitu-
ationsin businesshouses.
In some instancesthesewickedmen add to theiriniquityby goingthrough
the form of religiousmarriagewith the girls. Then they take them on board
shipto India,Brazil,Argentina,or othercountriesin SouthAmerica,andthen
sell themthereto keepersof housesof evil repute.
Whocan adequatelydescribetheirbitterfateandterriblesuffering...
We thereforeapproachyou today to conferwith you and to receiveyour
advicehow and in what way, we can removethe terribleshamefrom us....
Upon us all the dutylies to removethis horribleevil fromour midst. .. 124
The rabbis recommended that known traffickers be cast out of their

communities. No published reaction to these appeals has come to light, but
the subject itself and the galaxy of rabbis who signed must have given them
considerable attention. Now rabbis began to play an active role in combat-
123. Die Wirksamkeitdes von der Grosslogefur Deutschland U.O.B.B. ernanntenComitees

zu Bekdmpfungdes Mddchenhandels(Berlin, 1900), pp. 16-19; this volume, marked "Streng
vertraulich!," is a compilation of activities and press reports and includes a lengthy supple-
ment which is a translation from Spanish of a work naming traffickers and describing their
methods of operations. Almost all of them bore Jewish names and carried on in South America.
Chief Rabbi Hermann Adler's draft letter to Baron Horace de Guinzberg of November 28,
1900 (cited above, note 108) requests him to receive sympathetically a circular about to be sent
by the National Vigilance Association and to urge Russian rabbis to do likewise. The circular,
if sent, has not come to light.
124. Text and translation in Jewish InternationalConference,pp. 154-57; Ha-MeliS, March
27 (April 9), 1898.
ing the traffic.The Union of GermanRabbis(DeutscheRabbinerverband)

devoted part of its second annual meetingin July 1902 to "The Struggle
against the Trafficin Girls," which was the title of the main addressby
RabbiLeopoldRosenak(1870-1923) of Bremen,who had beencampaign-
ing on the subjectfor severalyears. Noting the high proportionof Jews
amongthe girlstransportedto Argentina,andthe evenhigherproportionof
Jewishmen among the traffickers,Rosenak urgedthat besidesprotective
and police measures, a long-range program of social and educational
reformbe undertakenin EasternEurope.His colleaguesgenerallyendorsed
Rosenak's views.125
As the pace quickened,the Hamburglodge's activities in the field
broadened.Under its auspicesBerthaPappenheimundertooka surveyof
conditionsin Galiciatogetherwith the young sociologistDr. SaraRabino-
witsch (b. 1880).Her sharein theirjoint report"On the Conditionof the
JewishPopulationin Galicia"includeda sectionon the trafficin prostitu-
tion.'26Germaneffortscameto a climaxwhenthe Hilfsvereinderdeutschen
Juden conveneda conferencein Lemberg,held on September15 and 16,
1903.Galiciawas the locale not only becausethe trafficin prostitutionwas
actively carriedon there, but thanks also to the political emancipation
underHapsburgrule which, unlike Russia, permittedpublicmeetingsand
conferencesto be heldreadily.
Such notablesattendedas Paul Nathan (1857-1926), head of the Hilfs-
verein,the AustrianReichsratmemberfor Galicia Emil Byk (1845-1906),
lawyer and politician,and Gustav Tuch (1834-1909) of Hamburg,poly-
math,economist,poet, and lawyer.Onerepresentativecame fromEngland,
the Rev. SimeonSinger.Rabbi Rosenak,BerthaPappenheim,and numer-
ous communal officials, leaders, and antiprostitutionactivists were also
present,and the event was open to the generalpublic.But the most signifi-
cant personalities,for the sake of whosepresencethe conferencewas heldin
EasternEurope,were rabbisof Galicia.Two rabbisof Lembergattended,
Isaac Schmelkes (1828-1906), one of the foremost respondents (poseqim) of
the age, and Ezekiel Caro (1845-1915), a Germanicmodernistand his-
125. AZJ, July 11, 1902, "Der Gemeindebote," p. 3; July 18, 1902, pp. 339-40; July 25,
1902, p. 353; Ha-Meli$, July 15 (28), 1902; Rosenak's address, "Die Bekampfung des Mad-
chenhandels," appeared as a pamphlet, Frankfurt, 1903. On Rosenak, see, Encyclopedia
Judaica (Jerusalem, 1971), s.v. Dr. Michael Rosenak, Jerusalem, kindly provided some infor-
mation concerning his grandfather.
126. Pappenheim and Rabinowitsch, Zur Lage.
torian. The former's nephew, Rabbi Gedaliah Schmelkes (1857-1928) of

Kolomea, somewhat a modernist although an old-fashioned rabbi in exter-
nals, also came.127 Cracow sent the Westernized Rabbi Osias Thon
(1870-1937) and the traditional Rabbi Hayyim Aryeh Horowitz
(1851-1904). Others included Rabbis Schnur (b. 1858) of Tarnow, Lilienfeld
of Podheitz, and Jacob Nacht (b. 1873) of Focsani in Rumania. No Hasidic
rabbi was present.
Emil Byk opened the proceedings with the hope "that East and West
may work together beneficially. Then the East will learn, and the West will
understand better and forgive the conditions in the East." Gustav Tuch
explained the methods employed by the traffickers, and Rabbi Rosenak
next spoke of the necessity of cultivating work habits, improving the Jewish
school, and limiting the rush to emigrate. Simeon Singer presented a letter
from Lady Rothschild (wife of Lord Rothschild) which urged rabbis and
others to impress upon parents not to allow their daughters to emigrate
"without any positive knowledge of their destination or future." He regret-
ted "the backward state of female education and training" in Galicia. Then
Meier Munk of Lemberg proposed in detail an organization to protect
women and girls. The discussion which followed included expressions of dis-
sent which exemplified the sensitivities of East European Jews facing the
West. Rabbis Caro and Horowitz disputed the need for an organization
devoted to moral improvement, which must have seemed to them Western
condescension. Horowitz attacked the view, which he presumably detected
in what had been said, that Galician Jews were morally inferior. To the pro-
longed applause of the meeting, he assailed the foreign intruders. The rabbi
of Cracow also saw no need for the association mooted by Munk, "particu-
larly since it is still in doubt whether there are really such traffickers in this
country." Nevertheless, the idea of protecting girls proved acceptable to the
assemblage. General improvements such as Rabbi Rosenak advocated,
which were offered as a long-range preventive to prostitution, implied
changes in the traditional way of life, and were not taken up. Horowitz
acknowledged that poverty lowered moral standards, while noting that
there were also daughters of the rich who "go the evil way." He urged there-
fore that the sale of erotic literature be prevented. Rabbi Gedalia Schmelkes
desired that rabbis have a voice in the projected society to combat the traffic
127. Avraham Kahana, Divrei zikkaron le-toledot ha-Rav ha-Ga'on R. GedalyahSchmelkes

(Przemysl, 1933).
and also in the policy of the Yiddish newspaper whose establishment was
suggested.
The conference concluded with a series of detailed resolutions, declaring
its determination to uproot Jewish manifestations of the pernicious traffic,
which existed only because of the extreme impoverishment of Galician
Jewry. It was also agreed that prevention required a network of institutions
for welfare and education. Besides such general statements the Lemberg
conference expressed satisfaction that branches of the local Jidische Verein-
igung zum Schutze von Madchen und Frauen-a literal translation of the
London society's name-would be established throughout Galicia. Bertha
Pappenheim urged that each branch have a women's auxiliary. Rabbi
Rosenak proposed a Yiddish newspaper whose policies the rabbis would
control, and the inspection of Jewish educational institutions in order to
raise their standards. He joined Singer in urging rabbis to shun the shtile
khupe. Rabbi Gedaliah Schmelkes proposed that Galician Jews be coun-
seled that turning traffickers over to the police was not at all a transgression
of informing against a fellow-Jew, but was really an act of religious merit.
The closing reception was enlivened by verbal sparring between Zionists and
their opponents.'28 The Lemberg conference succeeded in the only sphere
which could really succeed in Galicia, that of publicizing the traffic and the
means it employed to lure girls. Larger projects of education and welfare lay
beyond the resources of Galician Jewry and would have probably become
enmeshed in controversy among the conflicting outlooks.
Several years passed before the next conference. Meanwhile, the network
of protective societies expanded in the west, but Eastern Europe remained
weakly organized while Jewish emigration reached unprecedented propor-
tions. The last conclave before the first World War, and the most compre-
hensive and fully attended, took place in London at the call of the Gentle-
men's Committee of the Jewish Association for the Protection of Girls and
Women. It met privately on April 5, 6, and 7, 1910, and was attended by
eighty-two London delegates'29and sixteen from the Provinces, as well as
"a large number" of institutional representatives and subscribers to the
Jewish Association. Foreign delegates numbered twenty-seven, ten of whom
came from Germany, and merely five from Eastern Europe. The latter
128. A full report appeared in AZJ, September 25, 1903, pp. 461-63, and briefer accounts
were published in Ha-$efirah, September 7 (20) and 8 (21), 1903; JC, September 25, 1903;
JAPG&W,Report, 1903, pp. 46-51.
129. Perhaps 81, since one name seems to appear twice.
represented its upper crust, such as Baron Alexander de Guinzberg, and

David Feinberg of the Jewish Colonization Association. No effort had to be
made at this conference to persuade anyone that the problem existed, and
that the traffic among Jews ought to be suppressed by Jews.'30A detailed
agenda was presented, and each session had its theme which was stated as a
question. The first session dealt with "means ... to ascertain the extent of
the participation by Jews and Jewesses in the traffic." The following session
took up "the causes of the traffic among Jews" and means of checking the
traffic at seaports and at international borders, as well as cooperation
between Jewish and general bodies in the field. "Illegal Marriages and
Divorces," "The Marriage Broker ('Shadchan')," and "Advertisements re:
Situations" were included within the third topic, which dealt with "the lack
of responsibility of parents and guardians," marriages which were im-
prudent or not in accord with the law of the land, and the need for parents
and guardians to make "strict enquiries concerning situations abroad." The
fourth session took up the arousal of Jewish public opinion against the traf-
fic including "ineligibility of those concerned in the traffic to hold com-
munal offices." Finally, it was asked "how far can education
and social work be helpful" in view of the role of "bad economic conditions
[as] an undoubted source of the Traffic .. ."'31
The discussion was of high, informed quality. The British emphasized
social and educational work and recreation for working girls, as well as
criminal penalties for traffickers. The German speakers appear to lay
emphasis on reaching Eastern European Jewry. The conference declined to
set up an international Jewish association, but the lines of communication
were extended and tightened. Anglo-Jewry's primacy in the antiprostitution
field was confirmed, because of its institutional strength and the com-
munity's connections overseas. Thus, a delegate from the United States
came for the first time. She was Sadie American of the National Council of
Jewish Women, who brought with her memoranda from other Americans in
the field. After three days of deliberations the delegates returned home to
their local efforts.
Besides Jewish conferences, Jews also attended international gatherings
130. Israel Zangwill, representing the Jewish Territorial Organization, did inquire why a
distinct Jewish effort was required, and Claude G. Montefiore replied that "the evil has also a
special Jewish side" and there was close collaboration with general organizations which were
functioning in the field. Jewish InternationalConference,pp. 51-53.
131. Ibid., pp. 5-8.
against the traffic in prostitution. After Chief Rabbi Hermann Adler died in
1911, his successor Joseph H. Hertz followed Adler's habit and attended the
1913 congress. Those accustomed to Adler's caution and restraint must have
been startled when Hertz, speaking after the archbishop of Canterbury and
the Catholic primate to offer the usual clerical greetings which opened these
conclaves, vehemently denounced the Russian regime, which permitted
Jewish girls to settle as students in St. Petersburg outside the Pale of Settle-
ment only if they accepted the yellow ticket of the prostitute. The police
compelled them actually to act as prostitutes.'32With the outbreak of war
one year later every plan was altered and the international traffic stopped.
When the war ended new social and political conditions greatly changed the
earlier picture.
Our understanding of this whole slimy business would in no way be

improved by ready reference to "the world's oldest profession," and hardly
any more so by pieties about "the breakdown of Jewish family life." Grant-
ing the universality of sexual drives and the Jewish ideal of sexual purity and
family fidelity, the necessity remains of explaining why the traffic in Jewish
prostitution flourished when it did, despite intensive efforts to uproot it in
England and the ostracism placed upon everyone who was involved in it.
We should emphasize the exceptionally difficult social situation which
prevailed in the heyday of the great Jewish migration and for some time
after it. Vast Jewish population increase and profound poverty in Eastern
Europe meant great strain and suffering in families, while the existence of
lands of promise to the west made the desire to escape and better oneself
possible of realization. Finding economic security and personal identity in
the new lands placed an unbearable burden upon many individuals, espe-
cially those who came from families which were broken, temporarily or per-
manently, in the course of migration. In the interstices between departing
and arriving, between uprooting and settlement, piercing shafts of light are
shed upon the harshness and the instability within Jewish social life. Unscru-
pulous, sadistic individuals sought large profits. Lonely, discontented, or
unloved young women sought security and love. Their deluded quest
brought them only debasement and misery.
Department of Jewish History

Tel-Aviv University
Ramat-Aviv, Israel 69978
132. JC, June 27 and July 4, 1913.

Anglo-Jewry AND The Jewish International Traffic in Prostitution, 1885-1914.

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Anglo-Jewry and the Jewish International Traffic in Prostitution, 1885-1914

Author(s): Lloyd P. Gartner

AZJ: Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums(Leipzig)

wantto stay long enoughin town to marrypublicly,sincehe mightbe seized

Prostitution in the East EuropeanSetting

... a seamstressor factoryworker,an employeein someone'shome or store,

futurewhichwouldbe theirs.Dreamingled themto a warmintimacyof heart,

4. Ha-Melis, June 20 (July 3), 1904; Borokhov-Berekhyahu's collected writings, Nekhasim

the words of Bertha Pappenheim (1859-1936), the German Jewish social

8. Sisyphus-Arbeit,pp. 158, 201-5; JAPG&W,Report, 1912, p. 32.

11. JAPG&W, Report, 1907, p. 14.

It was demographic realities and social and cultural demoralization

20. Pappenheim and Rabinowitsch, Zur Lage, pp. 21-22.

shunned and ostracized such persons. "A."'s strictures in Cracow upon

sexual lapses and promiscuity, and between promiscuity and prostitution,

In Russia,Rumaniaand Galiciathe conditionsunderwhichthe Jewsare

Many written warnings and no doubt oral reports circulated, but

Unfortunately,there are also girls who leave their homes knowingthat

A balanced judgment is presented a few years later:

Girls from Galicia, Rumania,etc. coming mostly from villages,do not

The traffic in actual and potential prostitutes constituted a minuscule

We recentlyreada storyaboutmany"eligibles,"an entiretransportof "eligi-

Actually, it was "known to the police of various countries that men

Theyknow the laws directedagainstthemand theirevil workquiteas well as

28. Ha-$efirah, February 5 (18), 1904.

promisesof good situations,wherelargewages can be earned,and this very

As early as 1890, a notice went to the Jewish press on the Continent,

mises of a bright future in Buenos Aires. The three miscreants' sentence of

In recentyearstherehas beena greatdeal of emigrationby youngwomen.

A young marriedwomanwas on her way to Englandwith her threechil-

34. Ha-MeliS, July 1(14), 1902.

behindwith her little girl. He said he had decidedto go to BuenosAires,and

[A girl] was living with an aged motherat the house of a sister,when a

... She had been broughtto Londonby a trafficker.... He intendedtak-

38. JAPG&W,Report, 1911, p. 49.

ing ... the addressgivenwas thatof a manwho was in leaguewithmanytraf-

The daughtersof Israelarechasteand modest,but theirinnocenceis their

41. JAPG&W, Report, 1911, p. 50.

An Abominable Traffic in London

The East European Jewish traffickers who transported Jewish girls to

tian social worker,Mrs. Cooper, that "twentyto thirty Russian,Polish or

54. JLA, Report, 1889-1890, pp. 16-17.

accompaniedby younggirlsbut that on the returntheycamebackalone."61

61. Ibid., June 7, 1896.

64. LiverpoolDaily Post, March 26, 1896, p. 3; March 31, 1896, p. 3.

In England, where a Jewish marriage performed under the jurisdiction of

temptationwhichone can understandfor the lonelyorjoylessgirl,who sees

72. JAPG&W,Report, 1909, p. 65.

Age 1906 1907 1908 1909 1910 1911 1912

(It is difficult to explain the substantial discrepancy between the unaccom-

paid to have a telegram from Gravesend provide an hour or two of advance

Our inspectorsattend the arrivalof everyboat which carriespassengers

The entire procedure had the indispensable cooperation of the railroads

frailty or malevolence, especially during the earlier years of antiprostitution

Case31.-Aged 24. Arrivedin Londonin companyof a trafficker.Upon hear-

The great majority of the unaccompanied girls desired simply to join

80. JAPG&W,Report, 1901, pp. 49-53.

In Englandiz do a shtot Lester In Englandthereis a towncalledLeicester

82. JAPG&W, Report, 1901, p. 19.

The mundane records of the Jewish Association for the Protection of

86. The Times, April 29, 1907, p. 4.

92. JAPG&W, Report, 1912, pp. 24, 76.