This is a fascinating account of a terrible murder by a Jewish pedlar in eighteenth century England and an excellent example of historian Tony Kushner’s important work documenting the life and culture of Jews in Britain
June 8, 2025 19:38
Tony Kushner was one of the exciting young historians who emerged in the 1980s and 1990s and who, along with David Feldman, David Cesarani and Bryan Cheyette, brought a new vigour and excitement to the way we think about the life and culture of Jews in Britain. In over 30 years, Kushner has written and co-authored more than 20 books, starting with his breakthrough works, The Persistence of Prejudice: Antisemitism in British Society during the Second World War (1989) and The Holocaust and the Liberal Imagination (1994).
His latest book, The Jewish Pedlar, is a fascinating account of a terrible murder by a Jewish pedlar, Jacob Harris, in mid-18th-century England. It is part social history (the story of how Jews came to Britain after the 1650s, why so many became pedlars and how they were welcomed – or not) and part detective story (who was the murderer, why did he murder three people so brutally and what does his story tell us about Jewish migration and identity during the long 18th century and beyond?).
Jacob Harris (also known as Jacob Hirsh or Hirschal) was a pedlar and smuggler. But he is best known as the only mass murderer in British Jewish history. On May 28, 1734, in a small town in Sussex, he brutally murdered a couple and their maid and after a brief trial was hanged at Horsham and his body was subsequently hung on a gibbet, a particularly gruesome form of punishment, which involved hanging the body of the murderer in chains. Sometimes the body would be dipped in boiling pitch. Harris was widely written about in the local and London press and became the subject of a popular ballad.
“An intriguing question remains,” writes Kushner. “What was Jacob Harris of German/continental Jewish origin, doing in Ditchling Common in May 1734?” After all, he writes, “London has been the dominant place of Jewish settlement since Oliver Crowell re-admitted the Jews to England in the 1650s”. Around 70 per cent of British Jewry lived in London. During what Kushner calls “the long 18th century”, other Jews tended to settle in ports.
Was antisemitism a key factor? Crucially, there were no contemporary accusations against Harris that he had carried out ritual murder, though British Jews were concerned about “violence, prejudice and exclusion” against Jews. In particular, there was concern about Jews being labelled as criminal because of the links between poverty and crime and between Jews and stolen goods. There were also a number of Jewish criminal gangs in Georgian England. From Harris to Fagin, Jews were associated with criminality through the 18th and 19th centuries, part of the sense of Jews, writes Kushner, as “a largely unwelcome and dangerous presence”.
Starting with a murder in rural Sussex, Kushner ranges far and wide. His book is enormously ambitious. Ranging from Georgian and Victorian England to Jews and Empire and the history of migration, often linking his interest in the southern coast of England to larger historical questions about the Jews. It is a fascinating example of the new kinds of social history of Jews and migration that Kushner has helped pioneer during his long career.
The Jewish Pedlar: An Untold Criminal History by Tony Kushner
Manchester University Press