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Sources for business history: plans of New Court

Sources for art history: Catalogue of the pictures of Alfred de Rothschild 1901

Sources for yachting history: Plans for Nathaniel von Rothschild's yacht Veglia 1905

Sources for natural history: Walter 2nd Lord Rothschild and his zebra carriage: c.1910

Sources for global financial history: Map of lines of the Brazil Railway Company: c.1920

Sources for business history: index cards to bank files

Sources for social history: Rothschild Hospital Paris: 1920s

Sources for business history: detail of a Rothschild bond coupon

Sources for architectural history: Halton House: 1890s

Sources for the history of travel: Lionel de Rothschild's tours of Spain: 1909

Sources for local history: Tring Park: c.1900

Sources for Royal history: shooting party with Edward Prince of Wales: 1893

Sources for political history: Lionel de Rothschild: first Jewish MP: 1858

Sources for sporting history: St Amant winner of the Derby: 1904

Sources for local history: gardeners at Aston Clinton: 1899

Sources for Rothschild family history: Lionel de Rothschild's yacht Rhodora: 1927

Sources for London history: entrance to New Court: 1965

Sources for design history: plans for Lionel de Rothschild's Rolls-Royce: 1930

Sources for business history: Rothschild gold bars produced by the Royal Mint Refinery: 1930s

Sources for business history: letters of August Belmont Rothschild Agent in New York: 1860s

Exhibition - Faith & Charity

6: Testimonial from the Jewish Association for the Protection of Women and Girls

The Jewish Association for the Protection of Women and Girls was founded in 1885 as the Jewish Ladies' Society for Preventive and Rescue Work by Constance de Rothschild (Lady Battersea) (1843-1931) and a group of influential friends and relatives. Constance was the daughter of Anthony (1810–1876) and Louise (1821–1910). Combining a happy disposition with a concern for others, Constance and her sister Annie (1844-1926) inherited their mother’s strong sense of duty to the poor; as young girls, they taught in the village schools of their home in Aston Clinton and at the Jews’ Free School.

A social reformer

Constance became active in the temperance movement, and the movement for reforms of English women’s prisons. She was introduced to the women’s movement in 1881 by suffragist and temperance worker Fanny Morgan. In 1885, the sensitive issues of child prostitution and white slavery were brought to public consciousness by national scandals and journalistic exposés. W.T. Stead’s articles about white slavery fanned prejudice against Jewish immigrants by accusing East European Jews of being the source of the traffic in prostitutes and also the source of corrupting English girls and women.

The Jewish Association for the Protection of Girls and Women

Constance first learned about the desperate plight of London’s Jewish prostitutes from an English missionary in 1885. With the support of Nathaniel, 1st Lord Rothschild (1840-1915), Constance engaged many among the liberal leadership of Anglo-Jewry in the fight to rescue Jewish prostitutes by founding the Jewish Association for the Protection of Girls and Women. The mixture of Jewish traffickers and Jewish victims, she believed, demanded the creation of a distinctively Jewish organization, and Constance had to overcome the resistance of many who were reluctant to even admit there was Jewish prostitution in England.

With Emma, Lady Rothschild (1844-1937) as its first President, the Association was composed of network of prominent Anglo-Jewish women closely connected to women’s temperance, suffrage and educational campaigns. The Association opened homes to rescue girls from dangerous situations, provide moral education and train them for honest employment, establishing Charcroft House (later Rosaline House and Sara Pyke House), a lodging house for 'foreign Jewesses', and supervising a ‘Domestic Training Home’ at Highbury Home and Montefiore House, an industrial school for Jewish girls. In 1889, the Association founded a 'gentleman's committee', chaired by Claude Montefiore, to assist girls and women arriving alone at British ports. Constance continued to lead the organisation and to represent the Association at international meetings until the early 1920s.