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Anna M. Rosner
struggling for survival. If the authors chose to state a punchline at all, it would be
there only to stress the message of the picture, usually already clear enough without
it. Day-to-day cartoons did not reguire high-level thinking patterns—the most
common stereotypes usually connected with the appearance of the Jews. During
the early stage, they presented the members of the Jewish society as the lowest
class, the poorest, and dishonest; later Jews were presented as poor and hard work¬
ing but, generally, honest and devoted to their occupation.
The pictures connected to political events differed from the first kind. If any Jew¬
ish authority was presented, it would never resemble "the East End Jew"—a beggar,
a thief, a fraud. The pictures were kind, usually drawn in a way that would not offend
the person in guestion. The captions were often witty, sometimes rude, sometimes
harsh, and always pointing out the origin of the portrayed. The ancestry, the cultural
heritage of the people depicted was important, because that made them aliens. Oth¬
erness, in terms of origin and ancestry became a very important part of Victorian
society self-consciousness. In times of industrialization and the growing importance
of social groups other than the highest class, people wanted to point out where they
came from and where they belonged. For the Victorians it was natural to show the
cultural background of people present within their society and represented in art.
The easiest way of doing so was to use stereotypes.
At the dawn of the twentieth century, the issues of limitation of migrations and
fear of the danger they might bring were recognized as important enough to present.
These cartoons reflected political views, and ones supporting the Jews were more
common than those supporting the Aliens Act. Though the portrayed had remained
alien and strange, in time, they were no longer misunderstood or considered to be
dangerous. Instead they came to be perceived as weak—in need of help and eligible
to receive it.
In time, sympathy for the oppressed had grown and so did the understanding
of the role England had played in their migrations. The stereotypes referring to at¬
titudes that depicted Jews as dangerous, dishonest, and greedy had started to play
a less important role, and the number of caricatures that depicted such attitudes
decreased with time. What had remained, though, were the stereotypes connected
to appearance, especially facial features and social status (presented also by cloth¬
ing)—within Great Britain and outside of it.
Rights to all presented caricatures and pictures belong to the Jewish Museum
London Archive. Caricatures were used with permission of the Social History Cu¬
rator.