A strong tradition developed among Jewish women in Britain of helping others through welfare, educational or youth work. Sometimes this was part of the wider programme of anglicisation, trying to encourage new immigrants to adopt British middle class standards and values, while at the same time maintaining a Jewish identity.

From the 19th century onwards, women were active in trying to improve the conditions of life among the new immigrants. The wealthier Jewish women already living in Britain frequently engaged themselves in charity and welfare work.

Upper class women, such as Charlotte and Louisa de Rothschild, were involved in a range of philanthropic organisations for the Jewish community at the end of the 19th century. Many charitable institutions, like the soup kitchens that were set up in the East End for poverty-stricken newcomers, were run by women.

Women like Alice Model (1856-1943) were instrumental in bringing about much needed improvements in welfare. In 1895 she founded the Sick Room Helps service. Shortly afterwards, she helped set up the first maternity home for Jewish women in East London - later the Jewish Maternity Hospital, affectionately known as 'Mother Levy's' after the hospital's superintendent - which pioneered improved care of mothers and babies.

Alice Model was also involved in other organisations, like the Jewish Day Nursery (later renamed after her, the Alice Model Day Nursery) and the Highbury Home for Friendless Children.

Women were also particularly influential in the youth club movement. This proved to be a highly significant medium, in both the East End and later the suburbs, for shaping young Jews in their formative years. Several women are remembered with enormous gratitude and affection for their role in starting and running these clubs.

In 1919 Rose Henriques founded the St George's Jewish Settlement - boys and girls clubs - in the East End with her husband, Basil. They lived on the premises and were known affectionately as 'the gaffer' and 'the missus'. The clubs offered social, educational and sporting activities, and an annual Summer Camp.

Phyllis Gerson joined the Stepney Jewish Girls' Club as leader in 1929, a post she held for 50 years! The club had hundreds of members, and offered a range of activities that girls would have had little chance of taking up otherwise.

Some women saw a direct connection between youth work and education. Lily Montagu, one of the founders of Liberal Judaism, had a lifelong connection with the West Central Jewish Club in London's West End.

'Miss Lily', as she was known by generations of young women from the start of the 20th century until after the Second World War, believed the youth club was a way of encouraging personal development, involvement in a Jewish way of life, and awareness of social and political problems.

The tradition continued in the 1950s and 1960s through the valuable work of Celia Rose at the Clapton Jewish Youth Centre. This offered a combination of social and educational activities, a Jewish environment, and a warm and welcoming framework outside the home. Celia and her husband, Lou Rose, gave guidance and support to hundreds of Jewish teenagers, and are still remembered fondly today. One club member recalls:

A few women used youth work as a springboard for wider political activity. Miriam Moses, an energetic East End youth worker and social worker, entered local politics as a Liberal Councillor. She became highly influential in Liberal politics in East London in the inter-war years and, in 1931, became the first woman mayor of Stepney. Her work is commemorated with a blue plaque on her house in Princelet Street in the East End.

Although a significant number of women, like Miriam Moses, did become involved in public life, and exerted influence over the development of the community in ways that might have been unthinkable back in the shtetl, they were the exception. Immigrant Jewish women continued, for the most part, to be confined to the role of mother and homemaker, until the vote and other changes in wider society made it more normal for women to choose, and pursue, their own destinies.

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