Racism and bigotry in 1912

[Tarn Stephanos]

Some like to look back at 1912 as being "the Good Years" (and Walter lord wrote a book about the period with that title).
If you lived in America in 1912, and were a white protistant man, things might have been right as rain.
But if you were black, Asian, Jewish , Irish, Catholic or gay, the opression you faced would often take the form of violence.
In Boston in 1912, "Irish need not apply" were signs in the windows of many buisnesses...
Women were seen as inferior to men in 1912.
Its sickening how lynchings of black Americans were commonplace in 1912, yet the law would often refuse to prosicute the killers.....

Throughout Europe, Britain and America, Jews endured open discrimination, often by the authorities.

I can only imagine the brutality that outed gays must have endured....

How severe was racism in Britian and Australia in 1912?
How were the Australian aboriginies treated in 1912?
In Britian, were people from India treated as inferior?

I know that in 1912 the Brits sometimes treated the Irish as sub human...

Racism is a horrid evil, and still exists today, but the depths of bigorty that was openly practiced in 1912 was numbing...


regards



Tarn Stephanos

 

[Marilyn Lena Penner]

Racism came in more than one form then [probably now too].

Edward VII [Queen Victoria's son]had several wealthy friends who were Jews. They helped him with his finances and he bestowed knighthoods upon them. Because they were rich and royally connected, their children could marry into the nobility and gentry, who needed the money. After all, there were only so many American dollar princesses to go around, and not all of them were WASP.

Sigmund Freud and other psycholoanalysts were Jews. Actually, many German, Austrian and Dutch doctors, dentists,lawyers, and 'money-men' [bankers, brokers and businessmen] were Jews. It caused quite a vacuum when the Nazis barred them from their professions 20 years or so later.

Oscar Wilde and his Bosie. The 'Cleveland Street Messenger-Boy Scandal'. The un-straight life was there, and known to be there but it was out of sight. People didn't discuss it openly until someone with a grudge reported to the cops.

There was the 'polite' racism that many practices. Blacks, Jews, etc. were not physically assaulted, but they were made fun of. It seemed so matter of fact that I wasn't aware of it until I was made aware of it. Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers and Arthur Conan Doyle wrote very stereotypically and condecendingly about Jews and Blacks. It's hard to tell regarding homosexuals. Doyle was actively writing in from 1888 to 1930. Christie and Sayers were entering their 20's then.

I don't think Holmes and Watson were lovers [Watson seemed very much a lady's man, but he always noticed the details in their female clients' apparel], but the delightful ladies who live together in Christie's "A Murder is Announced" may have been lesbian. She doesn't say so, but they are certainly contrasting housemates.

And of course there was physical racism. A black person of my acquaintance told me he preferred overt to covert racism. "When it's up front, I can confront it. When it's in my face, I can fight it."

 

[Mark Baber]

[MAB Note: Here's an article that clearly wouldn't appear in a mainstream publication these days. MAB]

The New York Times, 4 March 1907

THEY LET HIM IN
---
Test of Pat's Reading Ability That Satisfied Ellis Island
---
An Irishman who arrived at the Immigration Station at Ellis Island the
other day from a White Star liner was taken before a Board of Special
Inquiry because there was a question as to whether he would be able to
make a living if allowed to land without friends and with little money.

He was one of those confident persons who had an answer to every
question. He knew he could get along without trouble and to this belief
he stuck and did his best to impress it on the board. Finally one of the
members asked Pat:

"Can you read?"

"Of course, Oi can," came back the confident answer. Still the
questioner was not satisfied. Wishing to test the man he picked up a
Yiddish book, and passing it to him, remarked:

"Just let me hear you read that."

Pat took the book, studied it, turned it upside down, and finally, after
turning over two or three pages, passed it back.

"Oi can't rade it," said he, shaking his head. Then brightening up he
added, "but be gorry, if Oi had me phlute Oi would play it for yez."

He was admitted.

-30-

 

[John Lynott]

I know that in 1912 the Brits sometimes treated the Irish as sub human...


What's that all about? A bit incendary and not needed.
Let us consider:
In 1912 the Great Famine was still in living memory and among a sizeable section of the Irish population there was still resentment at British rule.
There was raging debate about the question of Home Rule, and the fear of civil unrest in the north and south of Ireland.
There undoubtedly was a wide range of anti-Irish feeling across the rest of the UK, much based on historical anti-Catholic, anti-separatist prejudices, especially in the west of Scotland. But that does not translate into the 'Brits' sometimes saw the Irish as sub-human. Without sparking an online debate about the rights and wrongs of the British-Irish relationship, in 1912 Ireland was an integral part of the UK, its politicians sat in the House of Commons, its trade unions operated on a par with its English, Scots and Welsh counterparts. The country provided a sizeable proportion of the manpower of the British Army and the Royal and Merchant Navy and its sportsmen and women competed alongside and against the rest of the UK.
Yes, there were prejudices, polite and not soo polite racism and there was political argument but the use of the word 'sub-human' with all its 1933-45 connotations is perhaps unwise.

My Irish father was in the building trade, a motorway navvy amongst other things. He said - and I have seen this repeated in social histories - the best foremen were English and the best gangermen were the Scots, he didn't like working for Irish bosses. He always thought they were trying to pull a fast one on him.
My dad said a lot of things in fact...but that's another story...

 

[Stanley C Jenkins]

I was wondering if anyone else had noticed this extraordinary comment - which I believe to have been prompted more by gross ignorance than by malice. It seems to me that, even if the "English" had wanted to treat the "Irish" as sub-human, it would have been impossible to identify them, as there are no physical differences between the English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh or Manx inhabitants of the British Isles. Furthermore, the scale of the Irish diaspora has been so great that there are been said to be around 5,000,000 people of Irish descent in England! How can we discriminate against ourselves?

 

[monica e. hall]

Well, yes indeed, Stanley. A good question. However, I have to warn you that to discuss this here - which has little to do with the Titanic - is to court great controversy and argument. Since we live with a Government which apologizes for the slave trade 200 years ago - which we were the first to abolish - you can see that rationality is not exactly rampant here. And one may well ask why, in 2007, it is very difficult to be simply a black Briton, no matter how long your ancestors have lived in this country.

 

[Stanley C Jenkins]

There are perhaps TWO links with the Titanic. Firstly, the ship was designed and built in Ireland, and secondly the year in which shed was launched, 1912, coincided with the Ulster crisis, which nearly plunged the UK into civil war.

 

[Stanley C Jenkins]

"Jews endured open discrimination"

Yes they did, but not in the English speaking countries, which received them as refugees, often in great numbers - there were so many Jewish people in East London in 1912 that the East London Railway published timetables in Hebrew. And surely Gustav Wolff, of Harland & Wolff fame, was of Jewish origin (although he worshipped as a member of the Church of Ireland).

 

[Michael H. Standart]

>>And surely Gustav Wolff, of Harland & Wolff fame, was of Jewish origin<<

Interesting. Is there any evidence to support that? (Just curious.)

 

[Dave Gittins]

The Jewish experience varied greatly. Some indeed had a bad time, but others reached positions of power and influence.

Two Titanic-related cases are Isidor Straus and Sir Rufus Isaacs. Straus, apart from his great business success, was so esteemed that the Democrats selected him to fill a vacancy in the US House of Representatives. Sir Rufus Isaacs was promoted to become Britain's Attorney-General and was later Lord Reading.

On the other hand, even Sir Rufus occasionally was sniped at when his business affairs were discussed. Sometimes it was inferred that he and his brother used 'Hebrew' cunning in their dealings.

I suspect money talked loudly and bought real or phoney respect.

 

[Stanley C Jenkins]

Hello Michael,

Gustav Wolff (1834-1913) must be one of the most neglected participants in the Titanic story. He was a German Jewish immigrant who, perhaps more than anyone else, built Harland & Wolff into a major ship-building company and established the long-standing link with the White Star Line.

His parents had become Protestants in 1819, and so Gustav was presumably born a Lutheran. However, he subsequently became a member of the Church of Ireland (ie an Anglican/Episcopalian). He was also a Member of Parliament and, as such, would have been regarded very much an establishment figure. Nevertheless, in terms of racial origins he was certainly Jewish.

 

[Bob Godfrey]

George Orwell's essay Anti-Semitism in Britain, written in 1945, provides a useful overview of the situation in the first half of the twentieth century. Orwell comments, for instance: "There has never been much feeling against inter-marriage, or against Jews taking a prominent part in public life. Nevertheless, thirty years ago it was accepted more or less as a law of nature that a Jew was a figure of fun and, though superior in intelligence, slightly deficient in 'character'. In theory a Jew suffered from no legal disabilities, but in effect he was debarred from certain professions. He would probably not have been accepted as an officer in the navy, for instance."

The whole text of Orwell's essay can be read here:

http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/O/OrwellGeorge/essay/England/antisemitism.html

As a descendant of an Anglo-Irish marriage which took place in the year 1910, I too am challenged by Tarn's statement about Edwardian England's attitude to the Irish. The floor is yours, Tarn. What evidence can you offer in support of your controversial statement?
.

 

[Michael H. Standart]

>>He was a German Jewish immigrant <<

Not to pick nits, but if he was born a Lutheran, he was hardly Jewish, although his family may have been. I find something more then a bit disturbing about the notion that "You're a [fill in the blank] because you parents, grandparents or great, great, great, great grandparents were [fill in the blank.]"

However, back in this day and age, nobody would have even given it a second thought.

 

[Stanley C Jenkins]

"If he was born a Lutheran, he was hardly Jewish"

Michael,

I suggested that Gustav Wolff was "of Jewish origin". You asked me what evidence here was to support this statement and I told you. He was Anglican by religion but Jewish by race - if he had remained in Germany, and lived long enough to experience the Nazi era, his Protestant religion is unlikely to have saved his life. His racial origins would, in effect, have been a death sentence.

For the record, in the course of a generous and wholly sympathetic obituary, which it published on 18 April 1912, The Times did not mention Gustav's race or religion - it was clearly not an issue in early 20th century Britain.

 

[Dave Gittins]

I don't know about the Royal Navy, but during WW I Australia's greatest general, Sir John Monash, was Jewish.

I came across a curious bit of family history that says something about the place of Jews in our military. I'm named after my uncle, David Pryce, who served in WW I. He died of pneumonia in France.

After his death, the army wrote to my grandfather, asking if he was Jewish, as this would require a Star of David to be placed on his gravestone. Some thoughtful person must have though the name David might indicate a Jew.