The immigrant Jewish community in England 200 years ago had a bad reputation for crime. Was it deserved, and how did it arise?

Reliable statistics are probably impossible to come by. Policing and prosecution were quite haphazard affairs until the mid-19th century. In any case, the surviving records do not routinely identify Jews as such.

The figures that there are, however, do tend to suggest a high level of Jewish involvement in crime in the late-18th and early-19th centuries. Perhaps just as important were perceptions. In the eyes of both the host population and the Anglo-Jewish establishment of the time, the crime rate among Jews was unacceptably high.

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