Be well! Jewish health and welfare in Glasgow, 1860–1914

Between 1881 and 1914, nearly three million Jews left eastern Europe, of which about 15,000 settled in Glasgow, "second city" of the British Empire. Their integration was cushioned by a Jewish leadership which balanced community discipline with immigrant innovation-in contrast to London which swallowed ten times as many but doled out philanthropy with a large measure of social control. This is a well researched and descriptive rather than analytical history of the health, welfare, social conditions and medical aspirations of Glasgow's Jewish community, written by their foremost historian, who is also a general practitioner and leader of the city's Jewish community. Most Jews settled south of the River Clyde, in the Gorbals, where much of Glasgow's worst housing doubled as residence/workspace. The institutions facilitating early settlement were based around Garnethill Synagogue, established in 1879 but successor to congregations dating to 1823. Most welfare activities included a medical dimension with agencies increasingly secularized as the community expanded. Self-reliance was encouraged. Friendly societies became the most widespread associations among Jewish workers in Britain, and by 1908 only seventy-five Jews in Scotland were receiving poor relief. As the first substantial non-Christian group to settle in Scotland, Jews became targets for medical missionaries, perceived to be a greater threat to the community's integrity than they ever were in England. Jewish leaders mobilized to match facilities offered by missions. By 1911, 1,500 admission lines to Glasgow's hospitals had been secured, and a Jewish dispensary provided medical and dental care. Other institutions included a Jewish Refuge (1897) accommodating new arrivals and transmigrants; a Children's Fresh Air Fund (1908) offering country holidays; an orphanage (1913); and the Glasgow Hebrew Benevolent Loan Society (1888), which assisted workers to self-employment. Despite poverty and complaints by health officials of insanitary habits, Glasgow's Jews were continually shown to be better fed, more abstemious, and to have an infant mortality rate lower by a third than the host community. Jewish admissions to Glasgow's lunatic asylums were low (1.2 per cent between 1890 and 1914) despite a worldwide belief that Jews were predisposed to insanity. Jewish immigration to Britain appears to have had minimal epidemiological and demographic impact on infectious diseases although tuberculosis and trachoma became political issues. Glasgow played a leading role in the anti-TB crusade of the 1890s, largely because TB was responsible for 13 per cent of deaths in Scotland. Jewish paupers with TB were "encouraged" to emigrate to the …