Immoral Panic: Antisemitism in Georgian England
In 1753 the journey of a minor Jewish naturalisation Act through Parliament prompted an outsized furore.
Georgian London was not immune to eruptions of agitation or mob violence. The Wilkes affair of the mid-1760s, which mobilised the crowd behind ‘Wilkes and Liberty’ against the government, and the anti-Catholic Gordon Riots of 1780 are the episodes that have lodged most strongly in historical memory. Yet in 1753 the question of Jewish naturalisation captured the attention of the political nation, with London crowds parading the streets to the refrain of ‘No Jews, no wooden shoes’ (the latter a symbol of the French peasantry and a shorthand for popish tyranny).
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