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The Home Office and the Aliens Act, 1905

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Jill Pellew
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Type
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Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 32 , Issue 2 , June 1989 , pp. 369 - 385
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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References

1 5. Edw. 7, cap. 13.

2 Gartner, Lloyd P., The Jewish immigrant in England, 1870–1914 (London, 1960)Google Scholar; Garrard, John A., The English and immigration: 1880–1910 (Oxford, 1971)Google Scholar; Gainer, Bernard, The alien invasion: the origins of the Aliens Act of 1905 (London, 1972)Google Scholar.

3 Alderman, Geoffrey, ‘The anti-Jewish riots of August 1911 in South Wales’, Welsh History Review, VI (1972), 190–200Google Scholar; Buckman, Joseph, Immigrants and the class struggle: the Jewish immigrant in Leeds, 1880–1914 (Manchester, 1983)Google Scholar; Zubrzycki, Jerzy, Polish immigrants in Britain: a study of adjustment (The Hague, 1956)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Colin Holmes, ‘The German gypsy question in Britain, 1860–1906’, Gregory Anderson, ‘German clerks in England 1870–1914: another aspect of the Great Depression debate’, and Lunn, Kenneth, ‘Reactions to Lithuanian and Polish immigrants in the Lanarkshire coalfield, 1880–1914’, in Lunn, Kenneth (ed.), Hosts, immigrants and minorities: historical responses to newcomers in British society: 1870–1914 (New York, 1980), pp. 134–59, 201–21 and 308–42Google Scholar; May, J. P., ‘The Chinese in Britain, 1860–1914’ in Holmes, Colin (ed.), Immigrants and minorities in British society (London, 1978), pp. 111–24Google Scholar. (Literature on the Irish in Britain – not a foreign immigrant community – is omitted.)

4 John Rex, ‘Immigrants and British labour: the sociological context’; Alan Lee, ‘Aspects of the working-class response to the Jews in Britain 1880–1914’; Joseph Buckman, ‘Alien working-class response: the Leeds Jewish tailors’; and A. T. Lane, ‘The British and American labour movement and the problem of immigration, 1890–1914’; all in Lunn, , Hosts, immigrants and minorities, pp. 22–38, 134–59, 201–21, 343–67Google Scholar.

5 In particular, Rich, Paul B., Race and empire in British politics (Cambridge, 1986)Google Scholar; Searle, G. R., Eugenics and politics in Britain 1900–1914 (Leyden, 1976)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Also in the shoe-making, cabinet-making and cigar-making trades.

7 Copy of report to the Board of Trade on the sweating system at the East End of London by the labour correspondent of the Board (12 Sept. 1887), PP 1887, LXXXIX (331).

8 Reports to the Board of Trade on alien immigration, PP 1893–4, LXXI [C. 7113].

9 Fifth report of the select committee on the sweating system, PP 1890, XVII (169), xliii.

10 These included the east end Members, Thomas Dewar (Tower Hamlets), H. Forde-Ridley (Bethnal Green), Harry S. Samuel (Limehouse).

11 Cabinet paper on alien immigration by G. W. Balfour president of the board of trade, 1901, CAB 37/59 (no. 146).

12 The commissioners were as follows: Lord James of Hereford (chairman); Alfred Lyttleton, Evans-Gordon, Henry Norman and W. Vallance (restrictionists); Lord Rothschild and Sir Kenelm Digby (liberal views).

13 Report of the Royal Commission on alien immigration, PP 1903, IX [Cd. 1741] 40.

14 Memo by Simpson, 15 April 1903, P.R.O. HO45 10283/106464. I am grateful to the keeper of the Public Record Office for the use of these documents.

15 Digby, in fact, retired from the HO the very day that the report was signed.

16 Minute by Chalmers, 30 September 1903, H045 10241/B37811.

17 e.g. Gainer, The alien invasion.

18 Garrard, p. 85.

19 At the major port of London arrangements were made as follows: a chief immigration officer (of the rank of chief preventive officer) was added to the customs staff, while two preventive officers were to be given an annual allowance of thirty pounds for acting as immigration officers, and four preventive men were to be allowed 4 shillings a week to act as assistants to the immigration officers.

20 Draft HO to T, 8 Dec. 1905, Ho45 10515/135080/1 and HO to T, 9 Dec. 1905, T1/10494B/ 15443/22842. Various arrangements were made about payment of medical officers: e.g. the port medical officer of health at Harwich, Dr. Gurney, was signed on for six months and paid one guinea a ship between 5 am and 11 pm and two guineas at other hours. Interpreters were normally paid a fee of 7/6d per inspection or per board meeting. HO to T, 9 Dec. 1905, HO 162/1, pp. 18–28.

21 The ports were defined as Cardiff, Dover, Folkestone, Grangemouth, Grimsby, Harwich, Hull, Leith, Liverpool, London, Newhaven, Southampton and the Tyne Ports. Later (1909) Plymouth was added.

22 4 Hansard 153, col. 158 (5 Mar. 1906).

23 He once stood up to Churchill, refusing to sign some licensing statistics which he felt the home secretary had altered to suit his own political views.

24 The Times, 7 Sept. 1956.

25 Pedder, as a principal clerk, earned £900 rising in £50 stages to £1,000 a year. Porter's salary was £500, to be increased by £100 after three and eight years. (He was paid equivalent to the inspector under the Inebriates Acts.)

26 Chalmers to Gladstone, 23 Aug. 1906, British Library, Visc. Gladstone papers, Add. MSS 45993, fo. 38.

27 Each board was to have a clerk who should be, wherever possible, clerk to the Justices or the town clerk.

28 See papers on HO45 10515/135080, e.g./11.

29 Copy of answer by Gladstone to PQ, 15 Mar. 1906, HO45 10515/135080/11.

30 Minute by Pedder, 26 June 1907, HO45 10515/135080/11.

31 Memo by Pedder, 10 Mar. 1910, HO45 10347/143271.

32 Memo by Pedder, 10 Mar. 1910, HO45 10347/143271.

33 Memo by S. of S. (Gladstone), HO45 10326/131787/9.

34 Sec. 1 (3) (a) of the act refers.

35 Memo by Pedder, 13 Feb. 1906, HO45 10362/131787/6.

36 Minute by Chalmers, 15 Feb. 1906, HO45 10326/131787/6.

37 HO to Clerk of Grimsby Immigration Board, 11 June 1906, HO162/2, p. 239.

38 Chalmers to Gladstone, 6 Mar. 1906, Visc. Gladstone papers, Add.MSS 45993, fos. 17–18. For figures of alien immigrants refer to table 1, p. 383.

39 Memo by Porter, Haldane, ‘Aliens Act, 1905’, (02 1907)Google Scholar, HO45 10326/131787/93.

40 Minutes by Pedder, Blackwell and Chalmers, 8, 16, and 18Feb. 1907, HO45 10326/131787/93.

41 Minutes by Gladstone, 28 Feb. 1907 and 20 Mar. 1907, HO45 10362/131787/91 and /97.

42 Churchill was home secretary from February 1910 until October 1911 when he was succeeded by Reginald McKenna.

43 Gilbert, Martin, Churchill and Zionism (Lecture, Oxford, 13 03 1974), World Jewish Congress, British Section, p. 3Google Scholar.

44 Minute by Pedder, 28 June 1907, Ho45 10519/135998/4.

45 Cattarns (shipping companies' agent) to HO, 23 April 1907, HO45 10519/135998/4.

46 Minute by Churchill, 19 April 1910, HO144 151705/60.

47 Report of the departmental committee appointed to advise the secretary of state as to the establishment of a receiving house etc., PP 1911, X [Cd. 5575] 10. This section was, no doubt, composed by the officials on the committee. Neither the shipping companies nor the Jewish community (even though the latter wanted a receiving house) particularly wanted an increase in this figure.

48 HO Note, (probably drafted by Pedder), 1908, HO45 10392/173811.

49 Papers, Feb. to June 1906, HO45 10334/137764.

50 One example of this was when the HO got into a controversy with the convicting magistrate of the Russian prostitute (above) after she had been charged a second time. Another was when G. L. Denman, the Great Marlborough St. police court magistrate, urged the expulsion of an Austrian waiter who belonged to a union which Denman felt professed ‘socialistic and revolutionary opinions’. Denman to HO, 4 Feb. 1908, H045 10547/160976/12.

51 Correspondence between the secretary of state for the Home Department and His Honour Judge Rentoul, KC, on the subject of the expulsion of aliens, PP 1909, LXX (?) 5.

52 Fifth annual report of the Inspector of aliens for 1910, PP 1911, X [Cd. 5789], 4. Pedder found he was unable to compare the ratio of alien to native prisoners with that of aliens to natives in the general population. The census figures were not accurate enough about ‘aliens’, often not distinguishing between native and foreign born children. Minute by Pedder, (undated but Feb. 1911) HO45 10643/207426/1.

53 Gainer p. 205.

54 The first of these events was the much-publicized murder of a policeman in Tottenham by two alleged anarchists.

55 These figures do not include the cost of a Home Office principal clerk (earning £900 p.a.) spending probably more than a third of his time on aliens work. Figures taken from Estimates for civil services for the year ending 31 Mar. 1911, PP 1910, LXII (62), 113–14.