Constance Lady Battersea Rothschild

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Jewish Association for the Protection of Girls and Women

The Jewish Association for the Protection of Girls and Women (JAPGW) was an Anglo-Jewish organization in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries dedicated to providing Jewish women and girls an avenue out of prostitution. Founded by Constance de Rothschild Battersea and several other prominent Anglo-Jewish women in the 1880s, the JAPGW was initially one of the few organizations to acknowledge the plight of Jewish prostitutes in Britain, particularly among immigrant communities, but grew to be a multifaceted, nationally recognized organization.

Union of Jewish Women

Influenced by their American counterparts, Anglo-Jewish women organized a Conference of Jewish Women in 1902, which led to the foundation of a national organization, the Union of Jewish Women. The UJW determined the social service agenda for English Jewish women until World War I.

White Slavery

“White slavery traffic” was an expansion of the prostitution that spread throughout the world in the first years of the twentieth century, following the massive emigration to the New World and resulting from the growing poverty and misery of European women in the age of industrialization. Jewish women were particularly vulnerable in a hostile environment, and Jewish women's organizations played an active role in the international struggle against this plague.

Constance Rothschild, Lady Battersea

Constance Rothschild Lady Battersea was a link between English and Jewish feminism, as she convinced upper- and middle-class Anglo-Jewish women to join English feminist groups such as the National Union of Women Workers and encouraged them to create Jewish women’s organizations, such as the Union of Jewish Women and the Jewish Association for the Protection of Girls and women, which allied themselves with the women’s movement.

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