Journal Article

British Jews and the Racialisation of Crime in the Age of Empire

Knepper, Paul

2007

Overview

In the decades before the First World War (1880-1914), as thousands of Jews from Russia and Poland crowded into London’s East End, journalists, politicians, and anti-immigrant agitators introduced a vocabulary blending racial identity and criminality. ‘Jewish criminality’, embodied in the Jewish prostitute and trafficker, represented a ‘category in the making’. Looking back at this period not only affords an understanding of an early episode of the racialisation of crime, but insight into the response of a racialised population. The London-based Jewish Association for the Protection of Girls and Women (JAPGW), founded in 1885 by members of Anglo-Jewry’s leading families, carried out an extensive anti-trafficking campaign. To understand why they chose to promote public awareness of Jewish involvement in the international sex trade despite the uses to which their efforts would be put by anti-Semites, it is necessary to see their outlook against the historical period in which they lived. The JAPGW countered the racialisation of crime using a conceptual vocabulary common to the era; their outlook reflected ethno-religious commitment, Victorian social convention, and faith in social science knowledge.

• Publisher: Oxford University Press,OXFORD JOURNALS OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS,Oxford Publishing Limited (England)
• Subject: 19th century / Anti-Semitism / Antisemitism / Crime / Criminal justice / Criminality / Criminals / Cultural identity / Ethnic Identity / European history / Foreigners / Immigrants / Immigration / International trade / Jewish culture / Jewish diaspora / Jewish history / Jewish migration / Jewish people / Jewish peoples / Jews / Journalists / London England / Nineteenth Century / Noncitizens / Perceptions / Prostitution / Racial Aspects / Racial identity / Racialization / Religious commitment / Social sciences / Stereotypes / Trafficking / Victorian period / Vocabulary / Women / World War I