Catalogue description JEWS' FREE SCHOOL

Administrative, financial and academic records together with printed material and photographs.

The records have been arranged into the following groups:

LMA/4046/A Administration

LMA/4046/B Finance

LMA/4046/C Pupils' Records

LMA/4046/D Staff Records

LMA/4046/E Printed Material

LMA/4046/F Photographs

LMA/4290, LMA/4297

Jews Free School, 1732 - 1958, London

JFS Comprehensive, 1958 -, London

OPEN ACCESS

For further reading see:

'JFS Builds on a moving tradition', by Lorraine Kirk, "Jewish Chronicle", 13 March, 1987

'The Origins of the Jew's Free School, by Salmond S. Levin from "The Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England", vol. XIX

The Jews' Free School (now JFS Comprehensive) is the largest Jewish school in Britain.

It was founded by Moses Hart, who paid for the restoration of the Great Synagogue where the school opened as a Talmud Torah for 15 boys in 1732. It was originally a charity school for orphaned boys with priority given to those of German parentage. By 1788 the school had moved to Houndsditch and in the late 1790s moved again to Gun Square where the number of pupils increased in 21. In the nineteenth century Dr. Joshua Van Oven found a permanent site for the school in Bell Lane.

Between 1880 and 1900, one third of all London's Jewish children passed through its doors - by 1900 it had some 4,000 pupils and was the largest school in Europe. The School provided these children with a refuge from poverty, a religious and secular education and in the spirit of the times anglicised them. Famous pupils from this time include Barney Barnato, Bud Flanagan, Alfred Marks and the novelist Israel Zangwill. The school enjoyed the patronage of the Rothschilds and had for 51 years a headmaster called Moses Angel. Angel was probably the most influential figure in Jewish education in the nineteenth century and a great advocate of "anglicising" his pupils. They were, he said "ignorant even of the elements of sound; until they had been Anglicised."

The school remained there until 1939 when it was evacuated to Ely. The Bell Lane building was destroyed during enemy action and after the Second World War the school remained closed untilk a new site was found on the Camden Road. In 1958 the school reopened as JFS Comprehensive.

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