From Cradle to Grave: Cleanliness, Sanitizing Jews and their Neighbourhood and Public Perception

When large numbers of Jewish immigrants began pouring into London's East End in the 1880s, poverty, health and other social problems had been matters of national concern for some fifty years. Widespread belief in Jews' ‘racial’ distinctiveness and the theory that certain common diseases rarely affected Jews stimulated medical research. Jewish scientists mirrored the typical range of views of their era. Some denied the concept of race altogether; others accepted it, but denied Jews' inferiority. Still others pointed to Jewish ‘racial adaptability’. Leaders favouring both open and restricted immigration used such results to promote their views on the impact of aliens on British society.

The influx of poor, seemingly unhealthy immigrants fuelled apprehension over degeneration, infant mortality and infectious diseases. Native Jewry, inspired by genuine concern, charitable obligation and anxiety, undertook to improve the health and reputation of immigrants and developed services that offered medicine with a conscious programme of anglicization. They developed services to address the health and living conditions of Jewish mothers and their infants and children. Records from the JBG, Jewish maternal and infant welfare agencies, and the annual reports of the MOH for Stepney demonstrate that Jewish services contributed to a decline in infant mortality and enhanced overall well-being while shaping the immigrant community.

The sanitary movement and its pattern of intervention, initiated in mid-nineteenth-century England, associated public health and sanitation with communal order and morality.