Now! Then! A mob wrecks and loots Jewish shops and houses in east-central Leeds

3 June 1917: A mob wrecks and loots Jewish shops and houses in east-central Leeds

Survivors of the 1881 massacre of the Jews of Kiev prepare to emigrate to places like Leeds (Capuz 1881).

Jewish Voice. 1917/07/20. Anti-Jewish Riots in Leeds, England. St Louis, Missouri. Get it:

Excerpt

By what appeared to be a pre-concerted arrangement a crowd of well over 1,000 youths and men, with a sprinkling of women, assembled late in the evening on a large piece of vacant ground off Bridge Street. From here they rushed away in different directions, smashing the windows of shops occupied in all cases by Jews, scattering the contents of the windows into the street, and carrying some of it away. The principal damage was done to shops in the lower part of Bridge Street. Here every Jewish shop window was smashed, and the street was littered with fragments of glass and the damaged remnants of the goods which had been shown. Shop windows were also broken in Macaulay Street, Argyle Road, Green Road and York Road. A walk round the district in the early hours of the morning showed knots of Jews standing at street corners anxiously inquiring of the police if it was safe yet to go to bed. Piles of broken plate glass lay in the gutters, and the number of lighted bedroom windows showed the disturbed state to which the neighbourhood had been reduced. None of the ringleaders were arrested. The “explanation” that seems to have found the readiest credence is that wounded British soldiers have been molested, and even maltreated by Jews. The story varies, but a version is that some young Jews, resenting a taunt that they were not in uniform, took the crutches from a couple of men in hospital blue, and belaboured them to such an extent that, so the tale went yesterday, one of the soldiers died yesterday at the General Infirmary, and that his companion was likely to meet a similar fate. This allegation is vigorously denied by the members of the Jewish community.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.
Abbreviations:

ER: East Riding
GM: Greater Manchester
NR: North Riding
NY: North Yorkshire
SY: South Yorkshire
WR: West Riding
WY: West Yorkshire

Comment

James Appell:

The wartime discord prompted some soul-searching within the community, which began questioning whether the economic and social bonds between Jew and non-Jew, forged in Leeds by the conditions of the tailoring trade, were really as strong as the trade unions and socialist movements might have portrayed. The Jewish Chronicle offered its own analysis just a few weeks after the Leeds riot concluded:

There has been a very large and sudden increase in the Jewish population of Leeds during the last few years, and that there has in consequence been considerable inconvenience in many directions to the indigenous inhabitants … Towns, like countries, can assimilate only a certain Jewish element in a certain time, and the Jewish addition to the population of Leeds has been too much and too fast.

The rapid entry of nearly 20,000 Jews into Leeds within the space of two generations clearly exerted pressures on the local population. In this respect Leeds may have differed from London and other provincial cities, where Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe was of a longer duration, where an Anglo-Jewish community already existed and where tensions were less marked than in Leeds. Poverty and mode of employment may have united the two groups, but ultimately religious difference divided them. In such circumstances, therefore, Leeds Jews’ identity as Yorkshiremen was only ever going to be fragile (Appell 2019).

Via Lola Fraser, who thinks the perception that Leeds’s (eastern European) Jews were evading military service would have been exacerbated by the Leeds socialist-pacifist convention on 3 June 1917 in support of revolutionary Russia’s withdrawal from World War I (Fraser N.d.).

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Original

ANTI-JEWISH RIOTS IN LEEDS, ENGLAND.
(From the London Jewish Chronicle.)
A most serious outbreak of outrage against the Jewish population occurred on Sunday evening, June 3. It is claimed to have arisen apparently out of the so-called feud between Christian and Jewish youths in certain quarters of the town, which has led to so many assault cases here lately. Sunday night’s outbreak was evidently organized, for, by what appeared to be a preconcerted arrangement, a crowd of well over one thousand youths and men, with a sprinkling of women, assembled late in the evening on a large piece of vacant ground off Bridge Street. From here they rushed away in different directions, smashing the windows of shops occupied in all cases by Jews, scattering the contents of the windows into the street, and carrying some of it away. The principal damage was done to shops in the lower part of Bridge Street. Here every Jewish shop-window was smashed, and the street was littered with fragments of glass and the damaged remnants of the goods which had been shown. Shop windows were also broken in Macauly street, Argyll road, Green road and York road. The windows of two drapers’ shops, on a large corner shop in York road, had been completely cleared of what they contained, and in one case alone the damage was put at well over 100 pounds. In no case was a shop occupied by a non-Jew molested. A walk round the district in the early hours of the morning showed knots of Jews standing at street corners anxiously inquiring of the police if it was safe yet to go to bed. Piles of broken plate glass lay in the gutters, and the number of lighted bed-room windows showed the disturbed state to which the neighborhood had been reduced. None of the ringleaders were arrested.
The outrages were still continuing throughout Monday, many of the Jewish business houses being attacked by mobs. In spite of the applications to the police authorities for protection, the situation continues desperately ominous. From the reports already to hand about fifteen casualties have been reported, amongst them being Driver Rosenbloom, R. F A. (one of four brothers on active service), who is home on sick leave. On going to the rescue of a Jewish woman who was attacked bv the mob, his head was split open. Seen today, his head was swathed in bandages. He complained bitterly that although he handed his assailant over to the police, they refused either to arrest him or take his name. The looting of the Jewish shops in Bridge street was witnessed by a crowd of about two thousand onlookers, who not only made no attempt to stop the outrages, but attacked any Jew who endeavored to interfere with the mob that were carrying away parcels of provisions and goods from the wrecked premises.
Some Suggested Causes of the Trouble.
It is difficult (says the Yorkshire Post) to trace the origin of the hooligan outbreak which occurred in Leeds on Sunday night and Monday night. As is usual in all such cases, there are all sorts of rumors which, of course, grow with every repetition. It is an undoubted fact that within the last week or two a feud has arisen between sections of the Jewish and Gentile populations of the city, especially among the younger folk Indeed, it is stated in some quarters that in its inception the “battle” was simply a children’s affair. Youngsters quarrelled; their big brothers and sisters intervened; the mothers came upon the scene, and what was originally a more or less harmless juvenile encounter developed into a serious business that has led to the smashing of hundreds of windows of shops and houses occupied by Hebrews, the interposition of the police and the appearance of a number of the participators in the scene at the Police Court.
Another version is that the presence in the streets of numerous Jews in mufti has provoked the ire of people who — without, of course, knowing the circumstance – think that too many of them have obtained exemptions from military service while their own brothers and pals are undergoing all the hardships and risks of life at the front or preparing to take their part in the war. To this allegation a leading member of the Hebrew community replies that there is hardly a Jewish house in Leeds that has not contributed one or more members of the family to the Army, that if statistics could be obtained, it would be found that the Jews of Leeds have sent quite as large a proportion of men to the forces, having regard to the population, as any other denomination – probably a larger proportion – and that many of the people whose premises have been attacked have husbands, sons, and brothers fighting at the front.
But the “explanation” of the feud that seems to have found the readiest credence is based on the statement that wounded British soldiers have been molested, and even maltreated by Jews. The story varies, but a version is that some young Jews, resenting a taunt that they were not in uniform, took the crutches from a couple of men in hospital blue, and belabored them to such an extent that, so the tale went yesterday, one of the soldiers died yesterday at the General Infirmary, and that his companion was likely to meet a similar fate. This allegation is vigorously denied by the members of the Jewish community.

923 words.