Pride Versus Prejudice

This pioneering study isa treasure trove of new information, illustrating the lives and professionalexperiences of the people involved in such a way as to demonstrate clearly boththe obstacles they faced and the status they achieved. Its wealth of detail, inmany cases fleshing out the careers of leading Jewish professional figures forthe first time, makes engaging reading.The narrativeproceeds chronologically with careful attention to social context, startingwith the Victorian and Edwardian eras. For the medical profession, the accountof subsequent changes begins with the influx of Jews into medical schools after1914. John Cooper goes on to describe the problems these Jewish medicalstudents, most of them from immigrant families, encountered. Finding employmenteven as general practitioners was problematic, and almost insurmountablebarriers confronted aspirants to consultant status. Afraid of antisemiticclaims that Jews were flooding the market, the leaders of Anglo-Jewry eventried in the 1930s to dissuade young Jews from becoming doctors and lawyers. Inthis context, Cooper also considers the position of refugee doctors before and duringthe Second World War. The establishment of the National Health Service in 1948resulted in fundamental changes, particularly in the way in which consultantswere selected, and Cooper shows how this permitted Jewish doctors to enterspecialties from which they had previously been excluded and to climb to thehighest rungs within the medical hierarchy. He summarizes the careers of manyprominent Jewish doctors.Theexperience of Jews in the legal profession, both as solicitors and barristers,is examined in similar detail. Cooper sets the context with a discussion of thetreatment of Jewish litigants in the early years of the twentieth century inthe Whitechapel County Court and the criminal courts. He shows how thepersistence of an anti-Jewish bias in the inter-war period limitedopportunities for Jews and dissuaded them from entering the law; he alsoconsiders the position of Jewish refugee lawyers who came to England during the1930s and 1940s. After the war, major changes in the economy and legal systemallowed Jewish law firms to expand rapidly, challenging the dominance of theCity law firms in the commercial world. Many of these firms consequently beganto admit Jewish partners for the first time, and Jewish barristers, hithertoconfined to the less remunerative areas of civil and criminal law, werelikewise able to enter the more lucrative pastures of company and tax law. Fromthe late 1960s, Jews were also promoted in increasing numbers to position onthe High Court Bench. As well as giving a detailed picture of these mainstreamdevelopments the book also looks at the careers of Jewish communist, socialist,and maverick lawyers.The storyJohn Cooper tells will appeal not only to readers with a general interest inthe subject but also to social historians. It is based on a wide range ofsources, including newspapers and professional journals, archival material, lawreports, and interviews conducted by the author, and there are detailed indexesof names and subjects. As well as providing an illuminating account of recentJewish social history, the book makes a valuable contribution to the history ofthe medical and legal professions and to the scholarly debate as to whether ornot antisemitism was of peripheral or central importance in Anglo-Jewishhistory.