In Portsmouth, a Tale of Two Citizens (Daphne Anson)

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A tale, that is, of two ethnic minority citizens, one a nineteenth-century Jew, the other a twenty-first century Muslim.  What links these two individuals across the centuries is the fact that each was the first member of their respective creeds elected to metropolitan office in Portsmouth, England, a town in the nineteenth century and a city since the early twentieth century.  Their attitudes, it will be seen, are apparently a study in contrasts.

Portsmouth, for anyone unfamiliar with the Hampshire city, is Britain’s premier naval port, and has been for many centuries inextricably associated with the Royal Navy.  It was from Portsmouth that Admiral Lord Nelson disembarked to fight at Trafalgar, and his flagship, the Victory, can be visited today in dry dock at Portsmouth’s great historic Dockyard.  There are, indeed, numerous sites of historic and nautical interest in the city, including the house where, in 1812, Charles Dickens was born. (Other famous literary men associated with the Portsmouth include Conan Doyle and H.G. Wells.)  

Being a naval history buff I know Portsmouth very well indeed, and I say without hesitation that, all in all, Portsmouth, along with the popular seaside resort of Southsea (that lies within the municipal boundaries) can be considered a very pleasant place in which to live.  From the Guildhall Square a brisk walker, setting off in any direction, can cover a great deal of the sights in less than an hour; there’s a great deal to see and do; it’s well-supplied with public parks and green spaces, and, with the Isle of Wight on the horizon, and a fascinating harbour vista, it has coastal scenery that makes Brighton and Bognor seem boring in comparison.

And to whom does Portsmouth owe so many of the amenities and civic improvements that make it, along with Southsea, such a pleasant venue today?  To one of the most beloved citizens in its history, the first Jew elected to its Council, the London-born son of a Bavarian immigrant, that’s who.  His name was Emanuel Emanuel (d. 29 December 1888), and this, briefly told, is his tale.

He arrived in Portsmouth at the age of eleven and was in business with his father before he became, with his brother Ezekiel, a prominent jeweller and goldsmith in town.  Among the items the brothers manufactured was the Portsmouth Corporation’s regalia.  Emanuel was first elected to the town council in 1841.  At that time (and until 1845) English town councillors were required to swear an oath “on the true faith of a Christian” in order to take their seats, but Emanuel sat despite refusing so to swear.  He was thus liable for a hefty fine for every vote he cast as a councillor – but there was nobody in Portsmouth mean enough to tell on him.  In 1843 he unexpectedly lost his seat, but to popular acclaim was re-elected in 1844, the bells of St Thomas’s Church (now Portsmouth Cathedral) ringing out in joy.  In 1862 he became an alderman and in 1867 was elected Mayor.  It was owing to his vision and activity that Southsea, then a polluted swampy wasteland, was developed into a residential watering-place with an esplanade and piers.  He raised three-quarters of the requisite funds himself, and liaised tirelessly with Whitehall regarding this and other schemes benefitting Portsmouth, and almost always succeeded in those negotiations. 

A faithful Jew, known for his “cheery, good nature,” as a fellow alderman paying tribute recalled (Portsmouth Evening News, 1 January 1889), he was involved in both Jewish and general charities, and as a member of the Portsmouth School Board was a doughty champion of non-sectarian education.  He was responsible for the acquisition of two parks for Portsmouth, one in east Southsea that consisted of leasehold land and one that exists to this day as a large handsome public space in the city centre, Victoria Park (remember that name: it will be met with later in this post!), originally called the People’s Park.  In 1885 he was presented by his fellow magistrates with a portrait of himself, which depicted him seated in an easy chair, holding a copy of The Times in one hand and a cigar in the other, and with his habitual happy expression (Portsmouth Evening News, 8 May 1885).  He died rich in years and in reputation, a large crowd of Jews and non-Jews attending his funeral at Portsmouth’s Jewish burial ground in Fawcett Road.  A local road is named after him.

Present-day Portsmouth’s a medium-sized city that during the 1960s became twinned with Haifa, a linkage that I’m glad to note continues, despite the growth of an anti-Israel movement composed of the usual suspects that appears to be centred in elements at the local university, an institution of fairly recent foundation that was formerly the local municipal college.

During the 1960s the Sultan of Zanzibar and his family made their home in the city.  People in Portsmouth were flattered that the Sultan had chosen to settle amongst them; a friend of mine proudly recalled being served at the Portsmouth General Post Office on a general basis by no less a personage than one of the Sultan’s sons.  It must be remembered that many sailors were living in Portsmouth, perhaps more than today, when the Royal Navy is smaller than it was then: these were people who had sailed the seven seas and for whom non-white people were hardly a novelty. Small numbers of Indian and Chinese people opened shops and restaurants in the city, though it remains predominantly white.

Now, it seems, there are some 4000 people of Bangladeshi background in Portsmouth.  Shockingly, no less than five Jihadists from that community flew together to Syria in 2013 with the intention of fighting for Islamic State.  They were Mashudur Choudhury (who’s now serving a four-year prison term back in Britain), Muhammad Mehdi Hassan, Mamunur Mohammed Roshid, Muhammad Hamidur Rahman, and Assad Uzzaman (all of whom are now dead, as is a sixth Portsmouth man, Uzzaman’s cousin Ifthekar Jaman, one of the earliest British recruits to Islamic State.)

Some weeks ago I read in the Portsmouth paper online something that had me wondering whether April Fool’s Day had come early this year.  But, alas, it had not.  The item in question concerned complaints voiced by the first Muslim elected to the Portsmouth City Council, Mr Yahiya Chowdhury, Labour councillor for Charles Dickens ward.  He’s resided in the city since 1995.

“Muslim Labour councillor Yahiya Chowdhury said people have come to him with concerns over how they don’t feel included. And he blamed the council for not doing enough to help,” the item informed us. [http://www.portsmouth.co.uk/news/politics/portsmouth-muslims-are-suffering-with-depression-warns-labour-councillor-1-7159752#ixzz44jL0oNSR]

‘Cllr Chowdhury said: “People need support. A lot of the Muslim community do not tend to understand what is going on in the city. They are just suffering. There are a lot of people in the Muslim community suffering with depression.  Women feel they have no place to go and socialise and simply have coffee with their friends. They can’t express their feelings. They know they can’t take their hijabs off around non-Muslim people.”  Cllr Chowdhury said he has appealed for a weekend Bangladeshi school to be set up, but the council has only committed to include teachings on the culture in the existing school curriculum.  Cllr Chowdhury also said negotiations had stalled over plans to put up a memorial to those who died in the Bangladesh Liberation War – though Muslim officials say they are moving forward.’

The report added that ‘Muslim leaders – including the head of the Jami Mosque [the largest mosque in the city] – agree more could be done. But they have played down talk of any major problems … Syed Aminul Haque, chair of Bangladesh Welfare Association Portsmouth, said: “The city council is doing its best, but it can do more for the whole community, as well as the Bangladeshi community. We have had Bangladeshi classes for the past 35 years in Portsmouth, for our youngsters, in a private school, as well as at Mayfield School [a local state school] for the past few years. For whatever reason, that has been taken off now, although we have been fighting with the council over that…We have asked the council, for the past 10 years or so, for a Bangladesh Liberation War monument. The former leader, Gerald Vernon-Jackson, and the former MP, Mike Hancock, verbally agreed to provide us a place in Victoria Park.  But because of the change in administration, it has been delayed for whatever reason.  But we are still negotiating with the council over how it can help us….”

The brazen, unacceptable, divisive conviction that Portsmouth City Council is obliged to provide local Muslims with their own amenities – let alone a war memorial to Bangladesh’s war with Pakistan (the West Pakistan/East Pakistan conflict of 1971) – has not surprisingly angered many Portsmouth residents, as a number of intemperate comments regarding the report at site attest.

Councillor Chowdhury and anyone supporting his nonsense should heed the tale of the first Jew elected to what was at the time the Portsmouth Town Council.  Emanuel Emanuel was a proud and professing Jew.  But in common with the usual integrationist Jewish outlook and practice he did not demand any special treatment for Jews in the city.  If the Jewish community required facilities for its members it raised the revenue itself – it did not expect the metropolitan authorities to provide it out of civic funds.  Neither has any other religious group made such demands.  Nor do Jews, Sikhs and the rest attempt to proseytise, as members of the local Muslim community do regularly at public venues. 

 Is it any wonder that “Islamophobia” flourishes when Councillor Chowdhury, as reported, voices outrageous demands and depicts his community as victims of the Council’s neglect? 

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Industry, Invention, and Indolence: A British Major’s View of Palestine in 1929 (Daphne Anson)

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Edward William Polson Newman, born in Glasgow in 1887, was a politically right-wing author whose works included The Middle East (1926) and a biography of Masaryk (1960). On 5 November 1929 the Portsmouth Evening News, the local daily newspaper of Britain’s premier naval port, carried the following article by him (described as Major E.W. Polson Newman) which Elder’s readers may not find uninteresting. It appeared under the title “How the Jew and the Arab Fail to Coalesce”. Since, given his reference to Shylock, Newman seems hardly what we might consider a “philosemite,” I think his evident sympathy for Zionist enterprise is all the more significant.

Wrote Polson Newman:

‘The despatch of another battleship to Palestine waters draws attention once more to the extraordinary conditions in which Arabs and Jews are huddled together in different parts of the Holy Land. The two peoples are at present “at daggers drawn” with one another, and yet they are in many cases next-door neighbours.

Although in the principal towns such as Jerusalem and Haifa, there are definite Jewish and Arab quarters, these sections of the towns are so mixed up with one another that often Jews are living on one side of the street and Arabs on the other. While the Jewish houses are mostly European in character with the addition of a good supply of Oriental dirt, smell and rubbish, the Arab dwellings are primitive in the extreme when once the door is passed. The Jewish men are industrious, and are usually to be found working at some trade or other, while their womenfolk make fairly good housewives. The Arab men, in spite of their great physical strength, are experts at doing nothing, and are usually to be seen sitting outside on stools, smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee, while their wives are shut up in the seclusion of the “harem”.

Some of the Jewish houses I have visited could not be distinguished from superior European villas, and the family life was just the same as that of a French, German, or Polish middle-class house. But, when you penetrate into the Jewish quarters of the “Old City” of Jerusalem, you find living reproductions of Shylock wandering about the narrow, cobbled alleyways and dodging in and out of queer-looking doorways leading to dingy and sordid apartments. These quarters are full of little courtyards out of which open dark passages. On either side are the doors of dirty little rooms, in which aged Jews with long beards and side curls pore over the pages of the “Sacred Law” and lament over the misfortunes of the people of Israel in the Holy Land. These are the Orthodox Jews, who suffered severely in the recent riots, although the Arabs have no ground of complaint against them and are chiefly hostile to the Zionist immigrants.

An Arab house is quite unlike anything seen in Europe. It is built entirely of stone, inside and out, and the atmosphere of homeliness finds no place at all. While the women, of course, have their own quarters allotted to them, the men live for the most part in one room. The centre of the apartment is entirely free of furniture, but the walls are lined with a row of sofas and chairs, stretching right around the room. For hours and hours, sometimes for the whole day, the men of the family sit drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, and possibly talking politics.

The sanitary arrangements are most primitive, if they exist at all, and the few baths that are visible are usually full of corn for the chicken. Formal meals are serious affairs – much too serious for conversation. The most important part of an Arab house is the exterior, but this love of outward appearance is a characteristic of the entire East. I have visited the most palatial-looking villas whose interiors were almost like pigsties.

The greatest contrast between the Arab and Jewish homes is found in the country districts, where the Zionist agricultural settlements are often within a few hundred feet of Arab villages that might have been built two thousand years ago. On the one hand there is, perhaps, a Zionist cooperative settlement run on up-to-date lines, where Jews from all parts of Eastern Europe live in one community and farm the land. They have a common kitchen, take their meals together, provide collectively for their needs, and arrange their plans of work by mutual agreement. The profits are shared in equal proportion and no one can earn more than his fellow workers. Household work is pooled among the women, whether they are married or not, and this, together with the communal kitchen, enables them to devote their energies to the dairy, the poultry farm, or agricultural work in general. During the working day even the babies are herded together under the care of one mother.

The neighbouring Arab village is a very different affair. Square stone houses, in parts nearly as old as time, form a receptacle for a mass of human beings, camels, donkeys, pariah dogs, and chicken, and vermin of all kinds. Whole families live packed together in these terrible hovels, while the customs and mode of life have changed little since the days of Abraham.

Thus, the latest agricultural methods are employed at the end of a piece of land, while the other is cultivated according to the ways of the ancient Canaanites. In the former, water is pumped by hydraulic machinery; in the latter it is carried in great jars balanced on women’s heads.’

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Making Heretics of Some and Dhimmis of Us All (Daphne Anson)

A week or two ago, on a public holiday in the central business district (“downtown area”) of “The World’s Most Liveable City” (Melbourne, Australia), two rival gangs of violent youths composed of Sudanese on the one hand and Pacific Islanders on the other traded blows with – among other weaponry – tables and chairs they’d wrested from local cafes while law-abiding citizens celebrating an iconic annual carnival fled in fear and while outnumbered, defied and taunted police attempted in vain to cope. The scenes were ugly. Next day, an “elder” of the Sudanese community expressed shame and disappointment at the behaviour of these children of refugees, and so, soon afterwards, did a football star of Sudanese parentage. (Members of the Sudanese gang have been linked to criminal activity including a recent spate of luxury car thefts across suburban Melbourne.)

Australia’s popular conservative columnist Andrew Bolt (“Our immigration and refugee program has become a public menace”) has a good piece the above, including the self-censorship imposed by certain leftist media regarding the ethnicity of the miscreants. [http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/gangs_brawl_in_melbourne_why_did_we_import_this_danger/]

Yet for reasons that I for one fail to comprehend, the local Jewish community has over the past fifteen years or so fostered a so-called “special relationship” with the Sudanese. Why the Sudanese and not, say, the Cambodians or the Pacific Islanders? Or the down-on-their luck pensioners and welfare recipients, Anglo-Celtic, Italian, Greek, Maltese, Aboriginal – whatever – of this increasingly economically bifurcated city, one in which homeless “have-nots” seem doomed to rent for the rest of their lives or, worse, pitch sleeping bags by the side of the River Yarra, as a result of ridiculously inflated house prices being driven ever upwards by foreign buyers and overseas investors, a scandalous state of affairs that no mainstream politician seems to want to solve? Why the “ethnic” consciousness? Performing charitable works on behalf of the Sudanese is, it appears, the default “social justice” position for the Jewish community’s boys and girls. Every Jewish day school, it appears, is involved.

Don’t get me wrong. The pursuit of social justice is a component of Tikkun Olam, and therefore enjoined upon Jews. It’s not the concept that I find puzzling but the constituent. Why the focus on a particular ethnic group? Are the others not “black” enough? And why focus on one particular ethnic group anyway? Isn’t that discriminatory, as well as paternalistic and rather patronising (the “white man’s burden” and all that)?

The institutional “leadership” of the Melbourne Jewish community is firmly on a “social justice” bandwagon, but what actually constitutes “social justice” is of its own interpretation, one that has been hijacked by the community’s Left. Question a component of what the Left deems de rigueur and you almost risk the “heretic” label. In the past few days I’ve seen a well-known member of the Orthodox Jewish community who cannot in conscience accept some of what the secular “leadership” considers acceptable – indeed, not merely acceptable but absolutely necessary to promote – named and “shamed” on social media for clinging to what he considers “Torah-true” beliefs.

And the Left, I’m afraid, includes not only the political left but the Reform (renamed the Progressive) strand within Australian Judaism, one in which many political conservatives such as myself feel increasingly marginalised. The absurd incident in which Muslim conversionists strutted their stuff at Australia’s oldest Reform Temple still rankles. I suppose we should be grateful that, so far, Israel and Zionism have not been in the firing line of the Progressive congregations (though, sadly, in contrast to the halcyon days when such a thing was unthinkable and a great unapologetically Zionist Reform rabbi bestrode the Melbourne stage, the Progressives’ Zionist body has taken a few pot shots at Israel in recent months. An egregious example was a press release issued electronically, and to my mind quite gratuitously, last Pesach; it arrived in my “in-box” just as I was leaving for a seder, and had it not been for the entirely contrasting enthusiastic pro-Israel sentiments I found there – among immigrants from the former Soviet Union, no less – the bitter taste of that press release would have remained with me all evening. Political leftists at work again, I fear.)

The leftist hijacking of the Jewish community’s secular “leadership” has its parallel in the general leftist hijacking of the debate over immigration to Australia, or, to be more specific, the question of “asylum”. On that issue, as on so many others, the ABC (Australia’s counterpart to the BBC, and similarly obliged, as a publicly-funded national broadcaster, to be objective, an obligation it flouts with impunity) spruiks the narrative of the Green Left, and in particular an all-too-ubiquitous interviewee in ABC news broadcasts about “immigration and detention,” federal politician Sarah Hanson-Young.

Like the BBC, the ABC spins the vexed question of large-scale Muslim immigration into championship of the latter. A recent example is the enthusiasm with which the ABC touted a report entitled “Islamisation’ and other anxieties: Voter attitudes to asylum seekers” based on research led by Dr Denis Muller from the Centre for Advancing Journalism and launched at the Melbourne Social Equity Institute.

A look at both the latter institutions suggests definite left-wing influences, and, given its leftist agenda, the ABC was quick to imply that those who fear the islamisation of Australia are just bigoted ignoramuses: “Focus groups from rural towns and cities have demonstrated how ingrained fear and mistrust of new arrivals coming by boat are across the country. This new research, commissioned by Melbourne University’s Social Equity Institute, shows that prejudice against people seeking asylum is not grounded in evidence but in an unfounded fear of Islam, which is being falsely linked to terrorism. People from ten regional communities and capital cities were asked to answer a range of questions involving refugees, the media and community and their responses highlight how common ill-informed, Islamophobic attitudes are amongst the population.” [http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/rnafternoons/an-afternoon-of-muslim-speed-dating/7255460]

It’s a though no terrorist incidents and threats involving Muslims have occurred in Australia, as though no Australian Muslims have gone off to fight for Islamic State, as if no Australian Muslim there has photographed their offspring triumphantly holding up a severed head, as if no Australian Muslims have called for a Caliphate in this country, scorning democracy and gender equality in the process, as if no Australian Muslims have blamed Lebanese gang rapes of Anglo-Celtic young women on those young women themselves (“uncovered meat”) or proclaimed (as did one of the gang-rapists) “It’s not a crime to f**k a white slut”, as if no Australian Muslims have voiced the vilest antisemitism while inveighing against Israel.

It’s as if no Australian “Islamophobe,” looking at the current Muslim invasion of Europe, should tremble for Western civilisation and fret about the future of his/her own land, children and grandchildren. It’s as if Australians must turn a blind eye to the fact that virtually all chickens in this country are Halal-slaughtered and grin and bear it when confronted with so many Halal-compliant products in Aussie supermarkets that even buying a pot of yoghurt is a challenge.

It’s as if no Australian Jew or lover of Israel should look at the number of Muslims already in Australia (500,000) compared to the number of Jews (120,000) and draw his/her own conclusions about the deleterious impact on governmental support for Israel inherent in the consequent voter figures.

Yes, the Left strives to make heretics of the rest of us. If it continues on its path unchallenged it may succeed in consigning all of us – and with us its own adherents and progeny – to an ignoble and untenable dhimmitude.

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Lewis Gompertz: The British Jew Who Pioneered Animal Rights (Daphne Anson)

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In September 1893 at least two British newspapers (the Yorkshire Evening Post and the Aberdeen Journal), having noted that on 20 August Switzerland had passed a law banning shechita, commented identically: “The situation is full of irony. That the Societies for the Protection of Animals should claim to take Jews to task for the manner in which they prepare their food would be amusing if it were not so serious a matter. It was a Jew, Lewis Gompertz, who practically founded the movement in Europe for the prevention of cruelty to animals!”

In 1944, at London’s celebrated Brook Street Gallery, an exhibition on the theme “What the Jews have done for civilisation” was opened by the humanitarian peer and former politician Lord Sankey. Reported one of the country’s most prominent and respected provincial newspapers, the Yorkshire Post (22 February 1944): “It is lined from floor to ceiling with nearly 900 miniature portraits of Jews past and present, eminent in science, medicine, philosophy, art, music, literature and many other fields. Their names are legion … Animal lovers may note the name of Lewis Gompertz, who founded the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.”

On 6 May 1949 the Leamington Spa Courier carried a letter from the then chairman of the Shechita Committee of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Elsley Zeitlyn, objecting to the paper’s statement “We hesitate to charge the sons of Israel with deliberate barbarity. Religious conviction dating from Old Testament times, is the basis of the practices they employ.”

In defence of shechita, Zeitlyn cited the support for it of 400 eminent non-Jewish authorities, and quoted London University physiologist Professor (Sir) Charles Lovatt Evans: “I should be happy to think my own end was likely to be as swift and painless as the end of those cattle killed in the Jewish way undoubtedly is.” Zeitlyn also gave examples of the obligation Judaism places on its adherents to treat animals with consideration and decency: ‘For many centuries Jewish teaching has inculcated the utmost concern for the exercise of kindness to animals. It is regarded as the mark of a righteous man, and finds expression in the laws governing the daily life of the Jew. It was the Jew who first taught “Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn”, “Thou shalt not yoke an ox and an ass together.” Indeed, until the end of the 19th century cruelty to animals was nowhere illegal except under Jewish law. It is ironical to recollect that the RSPCA itself was founded by, amongst others, a Jew, Lewis Gompertz …’

If you think that the famous, controversial, Australian-born moral philosopher Professor Peter Singer, who authored Animal Liberation in 1975, is the Jewish pioneer of animal rights, think again.

On 1 May 1830 the following appeared in the correspondence columns of an English provincial newspaper, the Bucks Gazette:

“…. Let those who are satisfied that they commit no active cruelty, see whether they partake in a dish produced by unnecessary or excessive torture, eat lobsters, &c, which have been boiled alive … or eels skinned alive, or whether they countenance butchers who skin sheep or cut open and singe pigs before life is extinct, or run a hook through the nose and tail of calves. Let them go still farther – descend into their cellars and see whether they have any cats which are starving; whether any arsenic has been laid to poison, with excruciating torture, the unfortunate rats created there or any steel traps to mutilate them; and let them ask themselves if they had their own deaths to chuse [sic], if they think they could not find one more mild. Let them say whether they ever sit at ease in their carriages and unconcernedly hear the lash unmercifully applied on horses, – and here again we recommend the test of pain to be taken from their own bodies …. [A]nd farther be it known, that the link between man and brute is as strong as many others of nature’s chain, the ape and monkey being evidently man’s next of kin; while if report speak true, an offspring has arisen between them, half monkey and half man. Has, then, such offspring been granted only half a soul?”

Seems remarkably modern, doesn’t it, well ahead of its time?

The writer was Lewis Gompertz, born about 1783, the youngest of the large brood (including five sons) of a London couple, Solomon Barent Gompertz and his second wife Leah (née Cohen). Solomon Gompertz was a wealthy diamond merchant of Dutch Ashkenazi background and Leah was Dutch-born. The family was active within the Hambro Synagogue. In 1771, though, Solomon had the name of his newborn son Barent (his principal heir) recorded in the baptismal register of the church of St Olave, in the City of London, without, it seems, actually having him christened. The relevant entry reads thus: “Barent, the son of Solomon and Lea [sic] Gompertz, was born in the parish April 13 1771 which is here noted at the request of his father, as it may be of service to him hereafter, tho’ a Jew, to know his parish.”

Whether the same was done for Lewis and other siblings I do not know, but on 12 December 1809 Lewis married a non-Jewish wife, Ann Hollaman, at St Leonard’s Church, Shoreditch, and set up home in Kennington, a London district south of the Thames. Lewis believed strongly in the equality of women and like John Stuart Mill deplored their subjugation. The childless marriage proved a happy one. His brother Benjamin, who in 1810 at the Hambro Synagogue married Sir Moses Montefiore’s daughter Abigail, was a gifted mathematician, and Lewis was similarly accomplished. He had a gift for mechanical engineering, and over the ensuing years devised a number of inventions, many of them intended to alleviate the suffering of animals, or to abolish the use of animals as beasts of burden altogether, for instance in the invention of a type of velocipede in 1821.

In fact, the welfare of animals was his consuming passion. What he must have inculcated of the Jewish teaching on kindness to animals morphed into vegetarianism, even veganism. He abstained from eggs and meat, would not ride in carriages out of sympathy for the horses that pulled them, and avoided leather products. Resolutely opposed for killing animals for their flesh or by-products, he did concede that animals who had died of natural causes might be consumed or otherwise used. His essential attitudes are contained in his book, Moral Inquiries on the Situation of Man and of Brutes (1824), as outlined by himself in a letter to the Morning Advertiser (12 February 1830):

“That man possesses no other right over dumb animals than that of the strong over the weak, not even … to use them for his food and labour, much less to sacrifice for sport. That the chief mental superiority of man over other animals consists in his greater power of communication, and that, individually, or divested of this advantage, he is, at least in many principal respects, inferior to some brutes. That with regard to prior and future states, man and brutes seem precisely similar. That in each of them consciousness may be suspended by death for an indefinite times, but never destroyed, the possibility of re-animation always remaining. That life can never exist by sport alone, but it must be suspended after death until a new body be formed, and that then all recollection of this life will cease….”

Yes, in many ways incomprehensible stuff. Imagine how that must have been received by the average reader, especially in an era when badger-, bear-, bull- and otter-baiting, as well as cock-fighting, dog-fighting and of course fox-hunting were tolerated pastimes!

The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA; the prefix Royal came later, thanks to the patronage of Queen Victoria) was founded in 1824 by such good and compassionate men as the parliamentarian Richard Martin and clergyman Reverend Arthur Broome. Gompertz was on its committee from the start, becoming its manager in 1826 and its hon. secretary in 1828. He also acted as de facto treasurer and out of his own pocket (he had private means) rescued it from financial difficulties. His zeal for its work is exemplified by the prosecution he brought in 1828 against a man called Turner, whom he had seen in his own neighbourhood, Kennington, beating “in a very scandalous manner” a heavily-laden donkey (“ass” in the Times report) about the head and shoulders with “a long thick stick, more resembling a bludgeon than the proper instrument for quickening its pace” and for no discernible reason than the “gratification” of doing so. And also in his prosecution in 1830 of a butcher for transporting calves in a cart with their heads hanging over the sides resulting in serious injury to many and even death. The magistrate dismissed the case on the grounds that the butcher had no alternative means of conveying the livestock and had not been deliberately cruel, but the upshot was that, with the magistrate’s encouragement, Gompertz devised a more satisfactory means of transport for such animals.

His noble endeavours ensured that in 1832 he was awarded a silver medal by the SPCA, but in 1833, following its merger with the rival Association for the Promotion of Rational Humanity to the Animal

Creation (whose journal had accused Gompertz of anti-Christian and Pythagorean views), he was, being a Jew, effectively marginalised when the resultant new committee declared itself founded on Christian principles. He consequently resigned, and with the support of a number of sympathisers including subscribers, founding patrons, and the neo-Pythagorean Thomas Forster MB, FRAS, FLS – whose Philozia; or Moral Reflections on the actual condition of the Animal Kingdom (published 1839) would be dedicated to Gompertz – he founded the Animals' Friend Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. It carried on the work of prosecuting animal abusers and of distributing tracts that the revamped original organisation had suspended.

Three press items during 1836 illustrate the Animals’ Friend’s Society’s effectiveness, for, aided by his wife Ann as “Honorary Inspector”, Gompertz applied himself it its work with all the energy and enthusiasm that had characterised his involvement with the SPCA (which for a time his organisation eclipsed as a result):

Bell’s Weekly Messenger (30 October 1836) “The Animals’ Friend Society. The Hon. Secretary [Gompertz] and officers of this necessary society, last week called John Haines, a drover, to be fined 13 s[hillings] by the Court of Aldermen, and John Lambert’s drover 5s 6d by Mr Trail, for having ill-treated their cattle.”

Morning Advertiser (2 November 1836) “The Animals’ Friend Society has recently met with the most flattering testimonials of gratitude from the respectable inhabitants of Birmingham, Bilston, Sedgeley, Darlastan and other places, for the great good it has effected towards the suppression of bull-baiting in those districts; no less than forty-eight bull-baiters having been severely punished by the society last year [bull- and bear-baiting were outlawed in 1835], and this society being again engaged in directing its energies and means in the same laudable work, and having also, we understand, this year repeated its efforts towards abolishing the barbarous Stamford bull-running. We also learn that Lewis Gompertz, Esq. (its Hon. Secretary), has reason to believe that its previous interference will present that sport from again taking place. We hope our humane readers will bear in their minds the great expenses of these operations, and aid the society to continue its efforts.”

ell’s Weekly Messenger (13 November 1836) “Proceedings of the Animals’ Friend Society at West Bromwich and London. Last Sunday having been the day appointed for the commencement of the wake of bull-baiting, a bull which had been baited every year for the last 10 years, was got ready by a fellow called John Hancox, to be again baited (and on that sacred day). But upon his having discovered that the society was watching him, he concealed the bull in his own pantry, when his wife, on her having entered the pantry the next morning, little suspecting such a visitor, was terribly alarmed, and let the bull escape. Hancox then having been severely admonished by the Rev. Dr Spry, became truly penitent, and no baiting is now expected to take place. The agents next having notice that a badger was being baited, went to the spot and rescued it; after which they proceeded with nine constables to stop some dog fights, and took two offenders into custody, one of which was unfortunately rescued by the mob.”

To quote an advertisement for its organ, The Animal’s Friend (in Bell’s Weekly Messenger, 17 June 1838): “The Animal’s Friend No. VI just published for the Animal’s Friend Society (not the Society usually called the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals), 60 pages octavo and a copper plate, price 6d, containing its Sixth Report with its Prosecutions, 280 by this Society during the last six years, for Cruelty to Dumb Animals. Also, much miscellaneous matter connected with the subject, in which the crimes of Field Sports and vivisections perpetrated by the Rich; and Bull-baiting and other enormities by the poor are alike impartially exposed. Lewis Gompertz, Hon. Sec., Oval Kennington.”

Gompertz’s wife Ann died in April 1847. He felt her loss keenly. His own health was in decline and to make matters worse the Animal’s Friend Society had been experiencing difficulties. In 1843, for instance, three disaffected members spread a false report that it had disbanded, and kept its takings for themselves. In 1849 Gompertz appeared as a witness in a court case, a spiteful reporter describing him as “a miserably dressed decrepid [sic; archaic; i.e. decrepit] old Jew’. He died at his Kennington home on 2 December 1861 and was buried beside his wife in the local churchyard. Described in his Last Will and Testament as “Lewis Gompertz, gentleman” (and in the 1861 Census as a “fundholder”) he left around £14,000 (the equivalent of £1.5 million today). Had he flaunted his wealth, we can imagine what that spiteful reporter would have written.

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