Moses Angel

Moses Angel was born in the City of London, and lived in the 1860s and ‘70s at 1 Christopher Street (then King Street) in Finsbury. His name at birth was Angel Moses, but he changed it to Moses Angel, supposedly to distance himself from his father, who had been convicted of robbing a coach. The son certainly developed into a man of fine judgment, high principle, and vision.

Educated at University College School and then University College, he began work as a bank clerk in Dublin. Something drew him back to London in 1840 for a teaching job at the then fairly small and insignificant Jews’ Free School in Spitalfields. His exceptional qualities must have been quickly recognised, because two years later he was made headmaster.

Under his leadership the school developed into the largest elementary school in Britain and perhaps beyond. By 1870, it had 2,700 pupils, all being taught free of charge. A third of London’s Jewish children at the time of his tenure are said to have passed through, and this was at a time when London’s Jewish population was growing rapidly. Matthew Arnold, the poet and writer who was also one of Her Majesty’s Inspectors of Schools, is said to have been greatly impressed.

Angel was passionate about integrating new immigrant children into British society, insisting that they speak English, rather than Yiddish, and learn English manners. But he was equally determined to preserve the Orthodox Jewish faith among them. This approach might seem controversial today, and had its critics then, but it must have given a good grounding to youngsters torn from their homelands into a very different culture. He also found the time, somehow, to write several books, including one on the Torah, and was one of the first editors of the Jewish Chronicle in the 1840s.