Jews’ Free School Classroom • Southampton Anglo-Jewish Archives

This treasure, from Southampton Anglo-Jewish Archives, is photograph of a classroom at the Jews’ Free School, London. It is taken from the diary of Samuel Morris Rich (1877-1949) for 1905. Rich taught at Jews’ Free School from 1898-1938. He was lay minister of the South London Liberal Jewish Synagogue, later becoming full-time minister and secretary. He was also an expert on Charles Lamb and a vice-president of the Charles Lamb Society. He left a diary, in forty-five volumes (into which he added photographs, correspondence and press cuttings) which documents in great detail the life of the Jewish community. The diary is also part of Southampton’s collection.

We love this treasure for the vivid classroom detail, and how it stands as a companion to the JFS girls’ Hebrew lesson we featured as an earlier treasure.

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Hidden Treasures: Celebrating the documents, photos and artefacts in British archives that tell the story of Jews in Britain