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In 1929 the London County Council tramways, the Underground railways and the London General Omnibus Company proposed to coordinate their services. It was not until 1933, however, that the London Passenger Transport Board (LPTB) was established by law. During the Second World War the government assumed control of the LPTB, and remained in charge until 1947. In that year the Transport Act set up the British Transport Commission, which appointed executive bodies to deal with transport throughout the country. One of these took over the whole of road and rail transport in London, while the LPTB became the London Transport Executive in 1948.

Between 1970 and 1984 the Greater London Council (GLC) was responsible for the overall policy and finances of London Transport, while the London Tranport Executive was responsible for the day-to-day management and operation of services. On the abolition of the GLC in 1984, London Regional Transport was formed as a statutory corporation responsible to the government. It set up a number of wholly owned subsidiaries, including London Underground Limited and London Buses Limited. In 1990 London Regional Transport became known again as London Transport for all but legal purposes.

The Metropolitan Railway Company was responsible for the construction of the world's first underground passenger railway. Work began on the line in 1860, running from Paddington to King's Cross and then on to Farringdon Street. The first trial journey was held in 1862, with the line opened to the public in January 1863. The railway proved popular and extensions were constructed, the first being to Hammersmith by 1864 and Moorgate by 1865. In 1905 an electric service was introduced. In 1933 the Metropolitan Railway was taken over by the London Passenger Transport Board.

The following companies are represented in this collection:

A1 Bus Company;
Acme Pullman Services (Buses);
Alberta Omnibus;
Amersham And District Motor Bus And Haulage Company;
Associated Omnibus Company;
Atlas Omnibus Company;
C W Batten And Company Limited (Buses);
Bracklin And Vandy Limited (Buses);
Britannia Traction Company;
Brixton Motor Omnibus Company;
Bucks Expresses (Buses);
Cambrian Coaching And Goods Transport Limited;
Cambrian Landray Coaching Limited;
Celtic Omnibus Company;
Central Omnibus Company;
Chesham And District Bus Company;
Cosgrove Omnibus Company;
Criterion Omnibus Company;
Dangerfield Limited (Buses);
Direct Omnibus Company;
District Omnibus Company;
Dominion Omnibus Company;
East Ham Omnibus Company;
Empress Omnibus Company;
Fleet Omnibus Company;
Florence Omnibus Company;
Gearless Motor Omnibus Company;
Grafton Omnibus Company;
Grangewood Omnibus Company;
Green Line Coaches Limited;
Haywood And Nowell Limited (Buses);
Horseshoe Traction Company;
Invicta Traction Company (Buses);
Jockey Omnibus Company;
Lea Valley Omnibus Company;
Legion Omnibus Company;
London Road Car Company;
Lonsdale Omnibus Company;
Loveland Omnibus Company;
Mcmahon Omnibus Company;
Marathon Omnibus Company;
Mason Omnibus Company;
Metropolitan Steam Omnibus Company;
New Central Omnibus Company;
Northern Omnibus Company;
Nulli Secundus Omnibus Company;
Olympic Traction Company;
Omnibus Proprietors Limited;
Overground Limited (Buses);
Edward Paul Limited (Buses);
Pc Omnibus Company;
Priest Brothers Limited;
Primrose Omnibus Company;
Ra Motor Services;
Charles Randall Limited (Buses);
Reburn's Motor Services;
Shamrock Traction Company;
Skylark Motor Coach Company;
Silver Star Omnibus Company;
Superbus Limited;
T And W Omnibus Company;
Tottenham Hotspur Omnibus Company;
Tower Carriers Limited;
Unique Omnibus Company;
Victoria Road Car Company;
Vivid Omnibus Company;
W And P Omnibus Company;
Watford Omnibus Company;
Wellington Omnibus Company;
Western Omnibus Company;
White Star Omnibus Company;
London And South Coast Transport Limited;
National Omnibus And Transport Company.

These deeds and settlements were passed to the Society of Genealogists, who in turn deposited them with the archive. There is no unifying factor to the deeds (e.g. that they relate to property owned by one estate or family), they were simply collected for their antiquarian interest and their relevance to Middlesex local history.

William, 1st Earl of Mansfield, died on 20 March 1793 and was succeeded by his nephew David. The plan of the Kenwood estate may have been drawn up in connection with the 2nd Earl's succession.

Henry 3rd Viscount Clifden succeeded his grandfather in 1836 and on his own death in 1866 was succeeded by his son Henry George the 4th Viscount.

According to the Post Office London Directory Charles Douglas Singer was in 1859 secretary to the Medical Invalid and General Life Assurance Society. By 1880 he was described as a letter clip manufacturer. He lived in several of the North London suburbs, from c. 1859-67 in Upper Holloway, from c. 1869-82 in Stoke Newington and by 1889 he was living in his brother George's home at 53, The Common, Upper Clapton.

Catherine Sarah Courtenay of Porterlington, Queen's County, Ireland mortgaged property to Charles Douglas Singer in 1860. These papers concern the legal problems and the incumbrances on the estates in which she had an interest, either through her husband John Courtenay who died in 1841, or inherited from her father George Murphy.

The Harrison family papers relate to Edward Harrison who died in 1865, a stationer presumably of Matthews Harrison and Sons Ltd. of 82, Cornhill; his widow Elizabeth who lived at Tulse Hill and Blackheath before moving to Eastbourne and the younger Edward Harrison who lived in Enfield from 1891 until his death in 1902 or 1903. It seems possible that his wife Emma was the daughter of Charles Douglas Singer who was made a trustee and executor of his will in 1891. In her will she in turn appointed two members of the Singer family trustees and executors.

During the 18th and 19th centuries Parliamentary Acts were used to enclose (fence off) common lands and uninhabited waste lands and entitle them to an owner. Common land was that which had traditionally been used by locals (commoners) for communal pasture or farming.

These printed items were collected for their general or antiquarian interest, rather than having a united provenance (that is, being produced by the same institution or business).

No historical information has been found for Thomas Poynder.

Parish officials were responsible for early forms of local government as well as administration of the church. In Edmonton, overseers of the poor were first mentioned in 1639. One overseer was appointed for each of the four wards. Parish vestry meetings had begun by 1739 and included a workhouse committee which comprised the trustees, the vicar, churchwardens, overseers and elected parishioners. The committee administered poor relief, providing money or goods to paupers. It appears that the poor were admitted to the workhouse as a last resort, while poor children were apprenticed.

Source of information: 'Edmonton: Local government', A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume 5: Hendon, Kingsbury, Great Stanmore, Little Stanmore, Edmonton Enfield, Monken Hadley, South Mimms, Tottenham (1976), pp. 175-179 (available online).

Members of the Strange family lived at various address across London and Middlesex.

Charles Hart of Greenwich was a hotel keeper.

There is no obvious connection between the families.

William G. Venn was a butcher based in Beckenham, Kent.

William James Bonser lived in Newgate Street, City of London.

Sir John Maynard, 1602-1690, was a Member of Parliament and lawyer. In 1645 he was granted the books and manuscripts of the late Lord Chief Justice Bankes. In 1698/9 he was made Lord Commissioner of the Great Seal with Sir William Rawlinson. He was buried at Ealing and his library of manuscripts is now at Lincolns Inn Library.

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography notes: "having survived nearly all his family, Maynard left his property to his grandchildren in a will so tangled by the remainders he appointed that it required a private act of parliament and litigation to unravel" - the agreement in this collection arises from this action. Maynard's eldest daughter was married to Sir Duncumbe Colchester; his grand-daughters were married to Sir Henry Hobart and Thomas, Earl of Stafford.

Paul D. Halliday, 'Maynard, Sir John (1604-1690)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004.

Jonathan Crane lived at 3 Tulse Hill Terrace, Lambeth and died in 1860.

The Gascherie and Gashry families were related by the marriage of Suzanne Gascherie, daughter of Estienne and Suzanne Gascherie to Francois Gashry, a parfumier, at the church of St Mary Magdalen, Old Fish Street, London on 10 December 1696. Gashry appears to be an anglicised form of Gasherie, and it is possible that the two families are related but their connection is not apparent from the documents in this collection.

Francois and Suzanne Gashry had 12 children. The eldest, Susanne Gashry (Gascherie) returned to La Rochelle and died there in 1762 (see ACC/2079/A1). Her sister, Madeleine Gashry (Gascherie) brought the law suit to claim inheritance of lands in La Rochelle against more distant relatives, the Bonneau family (see ACC/2079/A1). Documents relating to the Gashry family were produced to prove Madeline's title to the lands, as a direct descendant of Estienne Gascherie through her mother Suzanne Gascherie, wife of Francois Gashry (see ACC/2079/A1) and to show that Gashry and Gascherie were variant spellings of the same name. As these documents refer principally to the Gascherie branch of the family they have been put with other documents relating to the legal case.

Francois and Suzanne Gashry's son Francis Gashry was a commissioner of the Navy in 1741 and Treasurer and Paymaster of His Majesty's Ordnance in 1751 (ACC/2079/B1/004). He married Martha ,whose will survives (ACC/2079/B1/007) and died in 1762 (ACC/2079/B1/002-003). A daughter, Margaret Gashry married Abraham Ogier in 1767 and her will also survives (ACC/2079/B2/001). Another daughter, Mary Martha married Henry Henrott, thus making the connection with the Hanrott family (see ACC/2079/C).

The Hanrott family is another Huguenot family. Jonas Hanrot came to England from Sedan. The Hanrott family name is a corruption of the original Henreau and is found in various forms including Henrott and Hanrot. Jonas Hanrot married Marie Anne Bocquet (Bauquer, Boque) in 1688 and their son Henry Hanrott married Marie Marthe Gascherie in 1724. They had two sons and a daughter. One of their sons, Francis Hanrott, (ACC/2079/C1/001) had seven children, including Francis Gashry Hanrott (ACC/2079/C2/001) and Philip Augustus Hanrott (ACC/2079/C3). Philip Augustus Hanrott was apprenticed as a solicitor's clerk to the firm of Dunn Lancaster and Dunn (see ACC/2079/D) and later formed his own firms, Hanrott and Metcalfe and Hanrott and Son (see ACC/2079/E,F). He married Caroline Cory and had several children including Henry Augustus Hanrott (ACC/2079/C5) with whom he had the solicitor's partnership, and Philip Augustus Hanrott Jnr. (ACC/2079/C6). Henry Augustus married his cousin Louisa Cory and had two sons, Howard Augustus, and Robert Cory (ACC/2079/C7) who married Julia Hanson and had several children, including Conrad Hanrott (ACC/2079/C8).

Philip Augustus Hanrott was articled to the firm of Dunn, Lancaster and Dunn in 1795 (ACC/2079/C3/001). The papers in this group relate to cases dealt with by Dunn, Lancaster and Dunn, and retained by P A Hanrott. The Penn papers (ACC/2079/D/003) include the Cremorne papers which do not appear to have a clear connection with the solicitor's firm, but which may have been kept with other Penn papers as the Penns were related to the Cremornes by marriage.

Philip Augustus Hanrott formed his own solicitors firm after leaving Dunn, Lancaster and Dunn. The first partnership was with a Mr Metcalfe and it broke up around 1837 (see ACC/2079/E6/005). The second partnership was with his son Henry Augustus Hanrott, and there seems also to have been a partnership with Charles Cory, Henry's brother-in-law. The last partnership was dissolved on Henry's death in 1852, although the settlement of accounts took until 1857 (see ACC/2079/E6/008).

The Archbishop of York held extensive estates in Battersea, Penge and Wandsworth partly derived from the Bridge Court Estate. Hanrott and Metcalfe acted as stewards for the Archbishop, collecting rents etc. In 1813 and 1837 the Archbishop of York applied for Acts of Parliament to allow him to sell off the Battersea and Wandsworth estates, to keep the revenue in trust for purchasing similar estates near the home estates of Bishopthorpe in Yorkshire (see ACC/2079/F1/008-012). Hanrott and Metcalfe were involved in valuing the land, calculating fines and arranging the sale of the estates to the tenants. The Archbishop also purchased a London house in 1809.

The Anchor Brewery in Southwark was established in 1616 by James Monger and taken over later by James Monger junior. It was bought by James (or Josiah) Child by 1670; who was joined by his son-in-law Edmund Halsey in 1693. Halsey became sole proprietor on Child's death.

The brewery was bought in 1729 by Ralph Thrale, Halsey's nephew, and passed to his son Henry in 1758. It was sold on Henry Thrale's death in 1781 to David Barclay, Robert Barclay, Sylvanus Bevan and John Perkins. The name was later changed from "Thrale and Company" (later "H. Thrale and Company") to "Barclay Perkins and Company" on 1 Jan 1798.

The company was incorporated as "Barclay Perkins and Company Limited" in 1896. Barclay Perkins took over Style and Winch with the Dartford Brewery Company and the Royal Brewery Brentford in 1929. In 1951 the company began to establish the Blue Nile Brewery in Khartoum.

John Courage of Aberdeen bought a brewhouse in Southwark in 1787. After his death it was managed by his wife Harriet and then the senior clerk John Donaldson. It was known as Courage and Donaldson from about 1800 until 1851, when John Courage junior and his sons removed the Donaldsons from management. The company was incorporated as Courage and Company Limited in 1888. The Company was based at Anchor Terrace, Southwark Bridge Road, London SE1

Courage merged with Barclay Perkins and Company Limited in 1955, and ceased to trade in 1957. The name was changed to Courage, Barclay and Simonds in 1970.

The documents in this collection relate to public houses owned by Courage Limited and various subsidiary or merged companies.

The property in Paddington was owned by Daniel Tidey, Westbourne Grove, Paddington, builder, in the 1850s. The premises then passed into the ownership of the Reverend T Blockley.

F P Morrell took over property in Spitalfields from Reverend L L Sharpe of Brixton. F P Morrell lived at Black-Hall, Oxford and was the coroner for the University.

The letters formed lot 235 in Sotheby's sale on 25 March 1974 and were bought by Mr Godfrey Groves, a keen collector of topographical material relating to North London. It is possible that at one time they formed part of the Gardner Collection of London topography, broken up in 1923.

A calendar of prisoners is a list of persons awaiting trial, often including a physical description, age and place of birth. The calendar may also provide information about the nature of the crime and the charges, list the names of the aggrieved persons, witnesses and the Justices who heard the case. Sometimes the outcome of the trial is also given. The Calendars were compiled by officers at the prison and submitted to the Clerk of the Peace.

The site of no.1 St Martin le Grand was purchased by Nomura International Plc from the General Post Office in 1986. It had been the main General Post Office building for the City of London. The site was previously owned by Christ's Hospital, which sold it in various lots to the General Post Office in the 19th century (the main site was sold in the late 1880s). The site included the Queen's Hotel (formerly known as the Bull and Mouth Inn), the former Angel Inn, and houses in Bull and Mouth Street and Magpie Court.

Phoenix Oil and Transport Company Limited was registered on 24 June 1920 to acquire various interests in Roumanian oil undertakings. In 1922 it acquired control of Roumanian Consolidated Oilfields Limited and in 1926 Phoenix Oil Products Ltd.

In 1926 Phoenix Oil and Transport also acquired Orion S.A.R. de Petrol, which owned oilfields in Roumania. Orion, although a Roumanian registered company, was a Dutch undertaking, formed in 1910. Unirea S.A.R. de Petrol, a wholly owned subsidiary of Phoenix Oil and Transport, was registered in Bucharest in 1920. Into it went the assets of several small English companies partially destroyed during the First World War.

Arbanash (Roumania) Oil Company Limited, incorporated in the United Kingdom in 1912, was the nominee through which Phoenix Oil and Transport held the whole of the issued capital of Unirea. In 1935 Unirea amalgamated with Orion and in 1938 with Roumanian Consolidated Oilfields Limited, so that by this date all of Phoenix Oil and Transport's Roumanian interests were consolidated in Unirea and its subsidiaries.

The company's assets were in enemy hands from 1941 until early in 1945, although the Roumanian subsidiaries continued operating, despite aerial bombardment which caused serious damage to refineries, tankage and loading stations. Production in Roumania declined sharply from about a million tons in 1936 to 396,000 tons in 1945. Unirea was taken into Roumanian state ownership in 1948.

Until 1946, a substantial interest in Phoenix Oil and Transport was held by General Mining and Finance Corporation Limited, which was represented on the board. Its interests were purchased in 1946 by Alpha Petrol Company of South Africa, and in 1948 the head office of Phoenix Oil and Transport moved to South Africa. On 27 February 1950 the company went into compulsory liquidation.

Phoenix Oil and Transport Company Limited had registered offices at 308 Winchester House, Old Broad Street, until 1923, then 6 Princes Street (1923-1926), 9-13 Fenchurch Buildings, Fenchurch Street (1926-49) and 33 King William Street from 1949.

The Port of London Authority was established in 1908 to take full control of the tidal river Thames and its docks.

The Authority was housed in a large stone office in Trinity Square, overlooking Tower Hill. The offices were built between 1912 and 1922 to designs by Edwin Cooper.

William Morris and Son, stock and share brokers, were situated at 80 Old Broad Street, 1875-1881; 121 Bishopsgate Street within, 1883-91; 80 Lombard Street, 1893-1895; at other addresses to 1924, and at 10 and 12 Copthall Avenue, 1924-1948.

Whiteheads and Coles were stock and share brokers of 39 Throgmorton Street.

The history below relates to Sun Insurance Office Limited only. For the histories of subsidiary companies and companies which merged with Sun Insurance please see their sub-fonds entries (CLC/B/192-02 to -37).

In 1708 Charles Povey founded the Exchange House Fire Office. In the next year, a Company of London Insurers was formed, consisting of 24 members. In 1710 Povey transferred his right in the Exchange House, also known as the Sun Fire Office, to the Company of London Insurers. The business of the Sun Fire Office was henceforth conducted in Causey's Coffee House near St Paul's Cathedral. In March 1711 it moved to a house in Sweeting's Rents. The Company was governed by two bodies: the General Court which was a meeting of all the managers, and the Committee of Management (consisting of 7 members) which met weekly.

A branch office, known as the Charing Cross office (or Westminster House), was opened in Craig's Court in 1726. The office was moved to 60 and 61 Charing Cross in 1866.

Business in Germany was established during the first half of the 19th century, and during the second half of the century the Sun Insurance Office began to operate in rest of Europe, the Near East, the Far East, the USA, Canada, South America, Australasia, China and Africa.

The Accident Department and the Marine Department were established in 1907 and 1921 respectively.

The name of the company was changed to the Sun Insurance Office in 1891. It became a public limited liability company in 1926. In 1959 it merged with Alliance to form Sun Alliance Insurance Limited, and in 1996 Sun Alliance merged with Royal Insurance to form the Royal and Sun Alliance Insurance Group.

The Sun Life Assurance Society was established in 1810 to take over the life insurance business of the Sun Fire Office. The membership of each company's board of managers was identical. Sun Life was based in Bank Buildings, then at Threadneedle Street, and later at Cheapside. The collection includes very few records of Sun Life Assurance Society.

The Sun Insurance Office archive includes records relating to the Sun Indemnity Company of New York. In 1822 the Sun Fire Office took over the Watertown Insurance Company and a US manager was appointed. By the end of 1886 the company was represented in 20 states. The following year the head office of the US branch was moved to New York. The Sun Insurance Office floated the Sun Indemnity Company of New York and the Patriotic Insurance Company of America in 1922. In 1929 the Sun Underwriters Insurance Company of New York was formed. In 1955 these companies were reorganized into two firms: the Sun branch, and the Sun Insurance Company of New York (incorporating Sun Indemnity, Patriotic, and Sun Underwriters).

The Sun Insurance Office had a number of UK subsidiary companies, including: Bath Sun Fire Office (from 1838, see CLC/B/192-06); Patriotic Assurance Company of Dublin (from 1906, see CLC/B/192-30); Alliance Assurance Company (from 1959, see CLC/B/192-02); London Assurance (from 1965, see CLC/B/192-26); and Planet Assurance Company (from 1968, see CLC/B/192-32).

The company was based at Causey's Coffee House in St Paul's Church Yard (1710-11), Sweeting's Rents (1711-27), Threadneedle Street (1727-63), Bank Buildings in Cornhill (1763-1843), and Threadneedle Street (1843-).

Standard Chartered Bank was formed in 1969 when the Standard Bank Limited merged with the Chartered Bank. This merger created the Standard Chartered Banking Group Limited; the group consisted of the Standard Bank and the Chartered Bank along with their principal subsidiaries and associated companies.

Immediately following the merger both banks continued to operate separately with each maintaining their own board of directors and a third board being created for the Standard Chartered Banking Group Limited. It was not until 1973 that the General Management of both banks were amalgamated and 1974 when the three boards of directors were all run by the same people. On 1 October 1975 the name of the company was changed to Standard Chartered Bank Limited. In 1983 all banking operations of both Standard Bank and Chartered Bank were brought together into one company, titled, Standard Chartered Bank. In 1985 the parent company was again renamed to Standard Chartered PLC.

Following the 1969 merger the bank retained City of London headquarter premises at 10 Clements Lane (former headquarters of Standard Bank Limited) and at 38 Bishopsgate (former headquarters of Chartered Bank). In 1990 new premises were opened in Aldermanbury Square for all London staff and in 20--, the headquarters were moved to 1 Basinghall Avenue, where the bank remains situated (as at 2014)

CHARTERED BANK OF INDIA AUSTRALIA AND CHINA

The Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China, known from 1956 as The Chartered Bank, was established by Royal Charter in 1853. It was an overseas exchange bank, based in and controlled from the City of London. It was established to take advantage of the end of the East India Company's monopoly in 1853.

STANDARD BANK OF SOUTH AFRICA

The Standard Bank of British South Africa Limited, known as the Standard Bank of South Africa Limted from 1881, was incorporated on the 18 October 1862 in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. Initially operating within British controlled areas, the bank gradually expanded its network to include branches across South, East and Central Africa responding to the economic development and growth of the regions.

Both the Chartered and the Standard Banks acquired shares in and merged with many other banks.

Geographical ranges these covered are as follows:

African Banking Corporation: British South Africa, Nigeria and New York

Bank of British West Africa: Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Gambia, Cameroon and Canary Islands

Bank of Nigeria: Nigeria and Ivory Coast

Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China: India, China, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Cambodia, Siam [Thailand], Burma [Myanmar], Singapore, Malacca, Penang and the Malay States, the Philippines, Japan, Java, Sumatra, Ceylon [Sri Lanka], North Borneo, Brunei, Sarawak, Pakistan and East Pakistan. There were also branches in New York (United States of America) and Hamburg (Germany). Despite its name, the bank never operated in Australia

Eastern Bank Limited: India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, Singapore, Malaysia, Yemen, Qatar, Iraq, Bahrain, Lebanon, Sharjah, Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Oman

P & O Banking Corporation Limited: India, Sri Lanka, China and Singapore

E D Sassoon Banking Company Limited: London, India and China, Gulf ports, Iraq and Japan

Standard Bank of South Africa: Cape Province, Natal, Orange Free State, Transvaal [South Africa]. After amalgamations; Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Gambia, Cameroon, Canary Islands and Ivory Coast

Wallace Brothers and Company (Holdings) Limited: India, Burmah [Myanmar], Thailand, Java [Indonesia], Malaysia and East Africa

Of the five companies, three are subsidiaries of the depositing company. City and West End Properties Limited, property company, was established in 1897 and based at 101 Leadenhall Street. In 1907 it moved to Bush Lane House where it remained until it was acquired by Trafalgar House Development Limited in 1964.

Corbett and Newson Limited, property company, was acquired by Trafalgar House Development Limited in 1966.

Woodgate Investment Trust Limited, property company, was incorporated in 1932 and shared offices with Corbett and Newson Limited at 17 Gracechurch Street (to 1933) and 34 Great St Helen's (1934-66). It too was acquired by Trafalgar House Development Limited in 1966.

Two of the five companies have no connection with the depositing company. Metropolitan Properties Company Limited and Consolidated London Properties Limited (which was acquired by Capital and Counties Properties Limited in 1964). The inclusion of these two companies derives from their previous association with City and West End Properties Limited, with which they shared both offices and directors before 1964: in some cases their records are intermingled.

William Hurt was a merchant of Bishopsgate and official of the East India Company, while his nephew Thomas Rogers was a factor for the Company. Although Hurt and Rogers were both employed by the East India Company, and Rogers' letters contain much about the Company's business, they appear to be private correspondence.

The City of London was divided into wards for the purpose of government as early as Norman times. The wards had responsibility to keep the peace, supervise trade and oversee sanitation, and each ward has the right to elect an Alderman and Commoners to sit in the Court of Common Council.

The movement to gain the vote for women was a mass movement that evolved most fully in the latter part of the nineteenth century. It was not, however, the only area of activity with the aim of improving the social and political situation of women in Britain. Earlier in the century, the idea of the 'sacred' protective duty of women gave them a 'high' ideological status in society that far outstripped their legal status. The social work that was undertaken by women's groups in the areas of housing and nursing led to changes regarding national laws on the poor, education and the treatment of the infirm. However, despite these achievements, the women who were responsible for them still found themselves legally impotent. This was also a time when the proportion of women compared with men in the country was increasing and the number of unmarried women without the expected financial support of a husband was growing as a consequence. Reformers therefore began to focus on the most immediate ways of improving the status and economic position of women, focusing on improvements to female education and the employment opportunities available to them. Schemes in the 1860s such as Emily Faithfull's Victoria Press and the plethora of female emigration societies that sprang up at the time and directed by individuals such as Maria Rye were designed to give women who were reasonably educated the means of supporting themselves. These developments were followed by activities centred on women's legal status regarding property and their ability to stand for election at the local level. None of the strands of activity was independent from the other as attitudes towards one affected perceptions of the others, and those who were active in one area such as women's employment also worked with colleagues more commonly associated with others such as education.

In the early nineteenth century it was impossible for women to practice as doctors in Great Britain. The alternative choice of nursing was seen as a corrupt profession of the unskilled and the lower classes until the middle of the century. Both attitudes were caused by women's lack of access to training in the profession, largely through the parallel lack of access to training in universities and colleges that were only open to men. The one role open to them, midwifery, was constantly undermined and devalued due to this very lack of university education involved in learning its skills. In America the situation was slightly different: the English-born Elizabeth Blackwell had become the first woman in the United States to qualify as a doctor though rejection by male colleagues forced her to set up a women's hospital in New York. Visits to London in the 1850s led to work at the St Bartholomew's Hospital and friendship with Florence Nightingale. In 1859 the General Medical Council admitted her to the Medical Register but the following year a special GMC charter made it possible to exclude doctors with foreign medical degrees, leaving women who had qualified on foreign soil open to attack. Nonetheless, in 1869 Blackwell moved permanently to London and there established the London School of Medicine for Women in 1870, as well as the National Health Society. Blackwell's influence on British women intending to enter medicine was already great: in 1862 the Female Medical Society was established and Elizabeth Garrett decided to enter the profession under her advice. However, Garrett's initial attempts to enter several medical schools failed due to the continuing refusal of universities to accept female students. Instead, she was forced to become a nurse at Middlesex Hospital, a profession that had become respectable through the work of Nightingale and her colleagues in professionalising nursing training and practice. Nevertheless, it came to light that the Society of Apothecaries did not specify that females were banned from taking their examinations and in 1865 Garrett sat and passed their examination before the loophole that allowed this was closed. Other countries began to allow women to enter the profession: in 1864 the University of Zurich admitted female students while the universities of Paris, Berne and Geneva followed suit in 1867. Garrett later was appointed visiting physician to the East London Hospital but though she subsequently graduated from the University of Paris, the British Medical Register refused to recognise her MD degree. In the next few years she opened the women-run New Hospital for Women in London with Elizabeth Blackwell and helped Sophia Jex-Blake to establish the London Medical School for Women to which Garrett Anderson was elected Dean of the London School of in 1884. The legal situation of women who wished to become doctors did not change, however. Though Edinburgh University allowed Sophia Jex-Blake and Edith Pechy to attend medical lectures in 1869, male fellow students rioted and their final examinations were rendered void as university regulations only allowed medical degrees to be given to men. The consequence of this was that the British Medical Association therefore refused to register the women as doctors. However, Russell Gurney, a MP and supporter of women's rights took the first legal steps to remedying the situation and in 1876 the Enabling Act was passed that allowed universities to award female students degrees in their subject. This meant that all medical training bodies were now free to teach women in this area if they chose to do so. The following year the Royal Free Hospital admitted women medical students for clinical training and the University of London adopted a new charter in 1878 that allowed women to graduate from their courses. Individual institutions were slowly forced to change their practices to permit women to hold their degrees, though some, like Oxford and Cambridge, resisted until 1920 and 1948 respectively. By 1891, 101 women doctors were in practice in the British Isles, and the following years the British Medical Association was finally forced to admit women doctors.

The issue of women in the Church in Great Britain was one that had its origins in the Reformation. Convents were included in the abolition of the English monasteries and with their disappearance women lost the only ecclesiastical role open to them until the twentieth century. In the nineteenth century women in the Church of England began to campaign for women's work in the church to be acknowledged by allowing them to hold positions in its hierarchy.

In the 1860s, a number of individuals such as Bessie Rayner Parkes and Barbara Bodichon, who were involved in creating employment agencies for women and opening up a variety of professions, became involved in the campaign for women's suffrage. The two movements came to be closely connected through shared membership. Many saw votes for women as the only means by which the professions could be opened up to both sexes and the conditions of working women improved through appropriate legislation. The connection between the two campaigns continued into the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Individual members of suffrage societies were involved in the work of the Women's Industrial Council, which was established in 1886 to campaign for 'equal pay for equal work'. The London Society for Women's Suffrage established a Women's Service department and a bee toymakers' scheme during the First World War, which later became the Women's Employment Department in the post-war period.

Hannah More (1745-1833) was born in Stapleton in 1745. When in her teens she wrote her first significant work, a play for schoolgirls entitled The Search after Happiness, published in Bristol in 1762. After a brief engagement she devoted herself to writing. She became particularly close to David Garrick and his wife who drew her into writing for the theatre. She wrote such plays as 'The Inflexible Captive' in 1774 and 'Percy' in 1778 until Garrick's death the following year. When this occurred, she retired to Hampton with his widow and continued her writing career in the form of didactic plays and poems. Her politics became increasingly reactionary with the outbreak of the French Revolution but she continued her use of popular forms such as ballads and in 1795-8 she published The Cheap Repository Tracts for the poor. In 1799, she published 'Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education', which called women to be worthy of holding superior moral value in the world while accepting women's inferior social status. Throughout the 1790s she and her sister Martha became involved in a project to teach the children of the poor in the Mendip Hills area. The children were taught to read, though famously not to write, with the purpose of Bible study. They were also taught the skills for trades such as weaving and sewing. She spent the rest of her life engaged in theological and moral reformatory work which found an outlet in texts such as 'Christian Morals' (1813) and 'Moral Sketches' (1819). In 1802, she built Barley Wood where her retired sisters joined her and where she lived until her move to Clifton. She died there 1833.

In a period in which the women's sphere was ideologically located in the home, their entrance in to the public sphere was seen as either a scandal or an object of mockery. However, while the fields of politics and commerce were largely closed to females, paradoxically, other positions in the public eye were not. Women writers and artists could be found from the Renaissance onwards and actresses in particular could achieve great fame for their work. However, women who entered into the public sphere in this way were generally considered to be outside of the normal rules of society even while being lionised by its members. This equivocal social position left them open to abuse, but at the same time meant that they could move freely around all sections of it while remaining at liberty to look after their own business and financial affairs in a way that a woman was not normally permitted to do. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the ambiguous status of such individuals with its benefits and limitations led a number of women involved in the arts to become acutely conscious of women's overall status. This led a number of them to become engaged in the campaign for the vote and for improvement of women's status. Groups such as the Actresses' Franchise League and the Artists' Suffrage League undertook collective action which others continued on an individual level throughout this period and into the second half of the nineteenth century as the campaign to improve women's status continued.

During the campaigns for women's franchise which had been conducted during the later nineteenth century, the focus of the groups taking part had been on influencing members of Parliament and their parties so that reform could be introduced from within Parliament. However, a series of bills to introduce a vote for women had been defeated as members of the Liberal Party, to which so many suffragists were attached, proved hostile to their cause. Additionally, by the turn of the century the media's interest had been diverted to the Boer War, meaning that publicity for the suffrage movement was rare. In this situation, a new organisation was established in 1903. Emmeline Pankhurst had been a supporter of women's suffrage for many years, but resigned from the Manchester branch of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies in this year and formed the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) with her two daughters Christabel and Sylvia. Initially, the group's purpose was to recruit more working class women to the movement, but by 1905, when the new Liberal government began to withdraw active support for women's suffrage, they began to use different 'militant' methods to gain publicity that were soon adopted as a new campaign strategy and would be reused by others both in and outside of their own group. At a meeting on 13 Oct 1905, at which the government minister Sir Edward Grey spoke, Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney disrupted the event by shouting, then refused to leave before becoming involved in a struggle. This resulted in their arrest on the charge of assault, they were fined five shillings each, and were sent to prison for refusing to pay. Their methods were in direct contrast to the constitutional methods of other groups such as the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies and attracted a number of early adherents such as Charlotte Despard and Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence. During 1906, the WSPU also began to increase the level of violence used, breaking the windows of government buildings and attacking Asquith's house with stones on the 30 Jun. However, not all agreed with the escalation of militancy or the Pankhurst style of leadership. A number of members left the group in 1907 with Charlotte Despard, Edith How Martyn, Teresa Billington-Greig, Octavia Lewin, and Caroline Hodgeson, to form another militant, but this time non-violent, organisation: the Women's Freedom League, which engaged in acts of civil disobedience. The impact of WSPU arrests increased when, in Jul 1909, hunger strikes began. The prison authorities feared public opinion would turn against them but were unwilling to release the increasing number of suffragettes who adopted this tactic. Consequently, women on hunger strike were force-fed. The violence escalated even further in 1913 when abortive arson attacks on the homes of two anti-suffrage MPs took place, followed by the burning of a series of other buildings. Some members of the WSPU disagreed with this arson campaign and, like Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence in 1912, were expelled or themselves left the group. However, the number of hunger-striking women rose even further and the government introduced the Prisoner's Temporary Discharge of Ill Health Act, known as the 'Cat and Mouse Act', by which ill suffragettes were released to be re-arrested on their recovery and sent back to prison to complete their sentence. However, the WSPU's situation changed on 4 Aug 1914 when the First World War broke out. Suffrage organisations across the spectrum of opinion suspended their political activities and transferred their efforts to war work, while the WSPU began negotiating with the government to end their militant activity and begin war work in return for the release of current suffragette prisoners. This occurred and the group began to organise demonstrations in support of the war and encouraging women to replace men in the workplace, bringing the militant stage of the campaign for the vote to an end.

James Ramsay MacDonald (1866-1937), was born in Lossiemouth, Morayshire in 1866, the illegitimate son of Ann Ramsay, a maidservant. He studied at the local school from 1875 until 1881 before becoming a pupil-teacher. Aged nineteen, he went to Bristol before moving to London in 1886, where he was employed as a clerk for the Cyclists' Touring Club. Poverty and ill-health ended his attempts to win a science scholarship and be became a clerk to Thomas Lough, MP. MacDonald joined the Fabian Society around this time and there met others such as George Bernard Shaw, Annie Besant, Walter Crane and the Webbs who were concerned with issues such as socialism and women's suffrage. In 1893 the Independent Labour Party was formed by members of this group, including Philip Snowden, Robert Smillie, Tom Mann, John Bruce Glasier, Ben Tillett and James Keir Hardie.

Mrs Mary Ellen Taylor (fl 1910-1914) and her husband Captain Thomas Smithies Taylor were friends of the Pethick Lawrence family, Dr Elizabeth Wilkes (her sister) and her brother-in-law Mark Wilkes. By early 1912 Mrs Taylor was an active member of the Women's Social & Political Union which was then engaged in a campaign of militant action against government and private property. On 4 Mar 1912 she took part in a window smashing party with a Miss Roberts and a Miss Nellie Crocker, attacking a post office in Sloane Square. They were arrested and brought before a magistrate at Westminster Police Court, who referred their case to the Sessions. From the 5-22 Mar 1912 they were placed on remand at Holloway Prison until Taylor went before Newington Session and was given a three months sentence. While in prison, she went on hunger strike, though she was not forcibly fed, and was subsequently discharged and taken to her sister's house on the 27 Apr 1912. She was imprisoned a second time in Jul 1913 under the alias of Mary Wyan of Reading. Mrs Ellen Mary Taylor refused release under the Cat and Mouse [Temporary Discharge for Ill-health] Act of 1913. She claimed complete discharge and declined to give the prison governor any address. When she was conveyed to a nursing home she refused to enter until her full release was granted and continued her strike on a chair in the road outside. The police then removed her to the Kensington Infirmary where she eventually gave up her protest. Around this time, the Woodford assault case took place, touching the Taylor's immediate circle of friends.

Captain Thomas Smithies-Taylor (fl 1910-1914) was the husband of Mrs Mary Ellen Taylor. He was a supporter of the militant suffragettes based in Leicester. He wrote letters to the national and local press on this and related subjects.

Dr Elizabeth Wilkes (fl.1910) was married to Mark Wilkes, he was a teacher employed by London County Council and a member of the Men's League for Women's Suffrage. She was also a suffragist and a member of the Women's Tax Resistance League. On the occasion when she refused to pay her taxes, her husband was obliged by law to pay the amount on her behalf. However, Mark Wilkes refused to do so and was sent to Brixton prison for this action. The Men's League organised a protest march to the prison and the Daily Herald interviewed Wilkes while in prison. He went on hunger strike and was released due to ill health. A meeting was subsequently organised by the Women's Tax Resistance League at the Caxton Hall in honour of the couple.

Mark Wilkes (fl. 1894-1914) was a teacher and the husband of Elizabeth Wilkes (1861-1956). Elizabeth refused to complete a tax return or to pay taxes herself and informed the tax authorities that as a married woman her tax papers should be forwarded to her husband. He, in turn, claimed that he had neither the means to obtain the necessary information to complete the forms nor to pay his wife's tax bill and was imprisoned for debt. The Tax Resistance League took up the case and achieved much publicity for it.

Women's Social & Political Union (WSPU) (1903-c.1919) was the prime mover of suffrage militancy. In Oct 1903 the WSPU was founded in Manchester at Emmeline Pankhurst's home in Nelson Street. Members include: Emmeline, Adela and Christabel Pankhrst, Teresa Billington-Greig, Annie Kenney and Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy. Several had been members of the NUWSS and had links with the Independent Labour Party, but were frustrated with progress, reflected in the WSPU motto 'Deeds, not Words'. An initial aim of WSPU was to recruit more working class women into the struggle for the vote. In late 1905 the WSPU began militant action with the consequent imprisonment of their members. The first incident was on 13 Oct 1905, Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney attended a meeting in London where they heckled the speaker Sir Edward Grey, a minister in the British government. Pankhurst and Kenney were arrested, charged with assault upon a police officer and fined five shillings each. They refused to pay the fine and were sent to prison. In 1906 the WSPU moved to London and continued militant action - with the Daily Mail calling the activists 'suffragettes' an unfavourable term adopted by the group. Between 1906-1908 there were several constitutional disagreements with the Women's Freedom League being founded in Nov 1907 by the 'Charlotte Despard faction'. From 1908 the WSPU tactics of disturbing meetings developed to breaking the windows of government buildings. This increased the number of women imprisoned. In Jul 1909 Marion Dunlop was the first imprisoned suffragette to go on hunger strike, many suffragettes followed her example and force-feeding was introduced. Between 1910-1911 the Conciliation Bills were presented to Parliament and militant activity ceased, but when Parliament sidelined these Bills the WSPU re-introduced their active protests.

Between 1912-1914 there was an escalation of WSPU violence - damage to property and arson and bombing attacks became common tactics. Targets included government and public buildings, politicians' homes, cricket pavilions, racecourse stands and golf clubhouses. Some members of the WSPU such as the Pethick-Lawrences, disagreed with this arson campaign and were expelled. Other members showed their disapproval by leaving the WSPU. The Pethick-Lawrences took with them the journal 'Votes for Women', hence the new journal of the WSPU the 'Suffragette' launched in Oct 1912. In 1913 in response to the escalation of violence, imprisonment and hunger strikes the government introduced the Prisoner's Temporary Discharge of Ill Health Act (popularly known as the 'Cat and Mouse Act'). Suffragettes who went on hunger strike were released from prison as soon as they became ill and when recovered they were re-imprisoned.

Discord within the WSPU continued - In Jan 1914 Sylvia Pankhurst's 'East London Federation of the WSPU' was expelled from the WSPU and became an independent suffrage organisation. On 4 Aug 1914, England declared war on Germany. Two days later the NUWSS announced that it was suspending all political activity until the war was over. In return for the release of all suffragettes from prison the WSPU agreed to end their militant activities. The WSPU organised a major rally attended by 30,000 people in London to emphasise the change of direction. In Oct 1915, The WSPU changed its newspaper's name from 'The Suffragette' to 'Britannia'. Emmeline's patriotic view of the war was reflected in the paper's new slogan: 'For King, For Country, for Freedom'. the paper was 'conservative' in tone and attacked campaigners, politicians, military leaders and pacifists for not furthering the war effort. Not all members supported the WSPU war policy and several independent groups were set up as members left the WSPU. In 1917 the WSPU became known as the 'Women's Party and in Dec 1918 fielded candidates at the general election (including Christabel Pankhurst). However they were not successful and the organisation does not appear to have survived beyond 1919.

'Zines' (produced "zeens") are non-commercial, hand-made magazines and booklets. Written, designed and published by their creators, these grass-roots publications are made simply and quickly on photocopiers and home computers. They fuse original artwork with images appropriated from the mainstream media and include writing that is creative, critical, personal and humourous.

Produced in small print runs from 10 to 10,000 copies, zines are ephemeral publications written on any number of topics. Due to their eclectic natures and amateur production values, zines exist on the fringes of popular culture, journalism, art practices, life writing, and academia. They are distributed by their creators through local, postal and internet-based networks and at events such as Ladyfest.

Whilst the history of zines dates back to the mimeo-graphed science fiction fan magazines (fanzines') of the 1930s, it was the fusion of punk culture and cheap photocopying rates in the late 1970s which saw a 'zine explosion' of DIY (do-it-yourself) cultural expression.

Traditionally, zine cultures are dominated by young men. However, the 'girl zine movement' of the early 1990s saw many young women and girls explore their experiences and voices within zines for the first time; inspired by the rise of the feminist and personal zines of the Riot Grrrl movement.

Young women make zines for a number of reasons: to explore their creativity, to make friends, to overcome isolation, and to think critically about the world around them. They blur genre boundaries by mixing together stories, essays, photography, rants, collages, lists, doodles, reviews, diary entries, and autobiographical confessions.

Zines are historical primary sources documenting women's everyday lives and cultural opinions. Zines are also a key tool in analysing 'third wave feminism', as young women explore their self-identities and redefine feminism in these publications.

The Women's Library collects zines and comics which reflect women and girls' experiences, interests and concerns in the UK today.

The central themes of the collection are the views of Judge N W Rogers, a virulent anti-semite, who believed in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and that the financial world was controlled by international Jewry. He sent one of his pamphlets and two others of a similar nature to Hugo Valentin in Sweden, with a letter in which he reasserts his antisemitic arguments. Evidently, they had already corresponded although it is not clear why. In addition there is correspondence between the Jewish Central Information Office and Valentin. Whilst little is known about Rogers, save for the fact that he had published a number of antisemitic tracts, the following information on Valentin was taken from Encyclopoedia Judaica.

Hugo Maurice Valentin, 1888-1963, was a historian and Zionist leader. Born in Sweden, Valentin first served as a teacher of history at a high school in Falun, but in 1930 was appointed lecturer and in 1948 professor at the University of Uppsala. Topics: European/ Prussian history and history of Jews in Sweden. In 1925 he became a Zionist, and from then on dedicated himself passionately to spreading Zionism to Swedish Jews. He became president and later honorary president of the Zionist Federation. He died suddenly preparing an argument against an anti-Zionist in a Stockholm radio station.

Otto Bernstein grew up in late 19th century Elbersfeld and Kassel, Germany, and was an inmate of Theresienstadt concentration camp. Bern Brent, the depositor, provides us with an account of his experiences on the ship, the 'Dunera', bringing refugees from Europe to Australia where he made his home.

Edgar Dreyfus was a banker, following in the tradition of the Dreyfus family, which had a history of involvement in the banking and shipping industries. The Dreyfus house in Paris was one of the first to be occupied by the Gestapo when the Germans occupied the city in 1940. The family, comprising father and mother, Edgar and Yvonne, and their two daughters, Viviane and Christiane, fled to the south of France, staying in Perpignan, Marseille and Cannes.

When the Italians capitulated in 1943 the family went into hiding in Pau and later walked to Spain. They were accompanied by a cousin, Manon Levenvach, who had managed to escape deportation by jumping from a train. She stayed with the Dreyfus family in Spain for the remainder of the war.

The Fernbachs were a Jewish family. Wolfgang Fernbach, trained in medicine and was a fervent Zionist. He became a financial journalist for an English newspaper and was a radical socialist during the First World War. He was a loyal friend of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg and an extremely dedicated political activist. He was murdered in January 1919 as one of the seven 'Spartacists', shot in the 'Vorwärts' building in Berlin.

Dr Robert Michaelis was born in 1903 in Berlin. Michaelis was of Jewish origin and emigrated to Shanghai in 1939, becoming president of the organisation of emigrant lawyers. He worked in a legal capacity; wrote articles on the rights of emigrants in Shanghai and returned to Germany in 1948 where he became Senatpräsident for Mainz.

Michaelis had been interested in the Dreyfus affair for many years and on retirement in 1957, he devoted much of his time to researching the legal aspects of the case against Dreyfus. The Dreyfus affair was an antisemitic scandal which divided France from the 1890s to the early 1900s. Captain Alfred Dreyfus, an artillery officer in the French Army was found guilty of treason for passing military secrets to the German embassy in Paris. Drefus was suspected for many reasons including his Jewish heritage. Michaelis died in Mainz in 1973.

The Dunera, a military transport ship, transported over 2000 internees from the UK to Australia in 1940 and was used to transport German and Austrian immigrants to Australia during this period.

Cecil Roth (1899-1970), Jewish historian, compiled a report and catalogue on the archives of the United Synagogue and its predecessor synagogues in 1930. A copy of the catalogue is available within this collection (reference ACC/2712/13/01/50).

Stephen Knott of Exmouth served in the Merchant Navy and the Royal Naval Reserves. The Knott and Legg families were connected by the marriage of Emma Knott and John Legg. The family lived in Holloway.

These papers relating to Heston and Isleworth were collected for their general or antiquarian interest and relevance to the subject, rather than having a united provenance (that is, being produced by the same institution or business).

Sir William Clay, first baronet, was born in 1791. His father George Clay was a shipowner and merchant. William entered the family business. He also served as MP for Tower Hamlets between 1832 and 1857; was Secretary to the Board of Control, and was magistrate for Middlesex and Westminster. In 1822 he married the daughter of Mr Thomas Dickason of Twickenham, and had 6 daughters and 3 sons. He died at Cadogan Place in 1869, aged 77.

Information from The Times, Wednesday, Mar 17, 1869; pg. 12; Issue 26387; col A

The horticultural societies and shows represented in this collection took place in a variety of locations, mostly in the former Middlesex, including Hanwell, Watford, Southgate, Northolt, Hampstead, Friern Barnet, Hounslow, Enfield, Ealing, Edmonton, Haringey, Muswell Hill and Bush Hill.

Nathan Adler was born in 1803 in Hanover, Germany and was the grand-nephew of Chief Rabbi David Tewele Schiff. He was educated at the universities of Gottingen, Erlangen, Wurzburg and Heidelberg and was ordained in 1828. In 1829 he was elected Senior Rabbi of the Grand Duchy of Oldenburg and in 1830 appointed to the office in Hanover in his father's stead. In 1844 Nathan Adler succeeded Chief Rabbi Soloman Hirschell and was installed on the 9th of July 1845.

Nathan Adler worked to establish uniformity of religious practices. In 1847 he issued a code of Laws and Regulations which underlined the supremacy of the Chief Rabbi. He visited provincial congregations and took an active interest in settling or preventing communal disputes. In 1855 he founded Jews College in Finsbury Square, London. It was opened as a school and college, but the attraction of good schools outside the Jewish community and the movement of Jews from the area of the City led to the school being closed in 1879.

Many changes to the composition and administrative framework of Anglo-Jewry took place during this Chief Rabbinate. Important Jewish institutions such as the Jewish Board of Guardians and the Anglo-Jewish Association were founded. In the 1860s Adler encouraged proposals for the union of Ashkenazi congregations under one management and the United Synagogue was created by Act of Parliament in 1870. It was also a period when some Jews examined their approach to their faith; some broke away from traditional observance to worship at the newly formed West London Synagogue, the first Reform congregation in Britain. The number of Jews in the country grew, especially from 1881 with the arrival of thousands of refugees fleeing from pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe. In 1850 the Jewish population in Britain as around 35,000; in 1914 it stood at 300,000.

In the last decade of his life Nathan Adler had poor health and retired to Brighton. His son Hermann Adler acted for him as Delegate Chief Rabbi until his death on 21st January 1890.

It appears that William Hunt lost the Assizes case and was fined. The matter then went to the Court of Queen's Bench. The Court of King's Bench (or Queen's Bench, depending on the monarch) was founded circa 1200 to hear common pleas, although it came to specialise in pleas of special interest and concern to the king, such as those which involved his own property interests, or breach of his peace, or an error of judgment by another royal court. By 1675 the King's Bench was the highest court of common law in England and Wales, with jurisdiction over both civil and criminal actions. Civil business was conducted on the 'Plea Side' and criminal business on the 'Crown Side'. It was absorbed into the High Court in 1875 (source of information: The National Archives Research Guides Legal Records Information 34 and Legal Records Information 36).