THE LARGEST SCHOOL IN THE WORLD.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXV, Issue 18, 20 January 1913, Page 5

THE LARGEST SCHOOL IN THE WORLD.

London, December 6. The extent to which Jews of the poorer class predominate in certain quarters of the East End of London is indicated by the fact that the Jews Free School in BelJ Lane at Spitalfields, is the largest educational establishment in the world. The number of pupils at this school which provides in addieitno to the ordinary course, workshops and laboratories for the boys, and cooking and laundry classes for the girls, is over 3500. The parents of the majority of these children are foreign Jews, chiefly from Poland and Russia, who have suffered oppression abroad, and have settled in England in order to be free from molestation. It is said that

the fame of the Jews’ Free School in Bell Lane has spread so extensively that its advantages are as well known to the Jews of Continental -countries as to those of Spitalfields and the adjoining suburb of Whitechapel. In the earlier days of the school a Jewish child, on arriving in London with its parents, attended the Free School on tlje following day, in company with the children of friends of its parents, although it could not speak a word of English. But for some time past the school has been unable to accommodate new arrivals. It was chiefly

owing to the advantages offered to Jewish children by this school that the Jewish community in the neighbourhood became dangerously overcrowded, and that the municipal authorities had to interfere. It has been described as “a huge factory for the manufacture of English citizens out of foreign material.” The attendance is free, as the school is supported by endowments and contributions from wealthy Jews in London. The Rothshcild - family have been amongst its foremost patrons. It was at this school (says the correspondent of the Sydney Daily Telegraph) that Mr Israel Zangwill put in some years as a teacher before he achieved success in fiction as the chronicler, of life in the Ghetto.