Rufus Isaacs, 1st Marquess of Reading
Rufus Daniel Isaacs, 1st Marquess of Reading, GCB, GCSI, GCIE, GCVO, PC (10 October 1860 – 30 December 1935), known as The Earl of Reading from 1917 to 1926, was a British Liberal politician and judge, who served as Lord Chief Justice of England,[1] Viceroy of India, and Foreign Secretary, the last Liberal to hold that post. The second practising Jew to be a member of the British cabinet (the first being Herbert Samuel,[2] who was also a member of H. H. Asquith's government), Isaacs was the first Jew to be Lord Chief Justice, and the first, and as yet, only British Jew to be raised to a marquessate.
The Marquess of Reading
Lawyer, jurist, politician
Biography[edit]
Rufus Isaacs was born at 3 Bury Street, in the parish of St Mary Axe, London, the son of a Jewish fruit importer at Spitalfields.[3] He was educated at University College School[1] and then entered the family business at the age of 15. In 1876–77 he served as a ship's boy and later worked as a jobber on the stock-exchange from 1880 to 1884. In 1887 he married Alice Edith Cohen, who suffered from a chronic physical disability and died of cancer in 1930, after over 40 years of marriage. The Lady Reading Hospital in Peshawar is named after her.
He then married Stella Charnaud, the first Lady Reading's secretary. His second marriage lasted until his own death in 1935. After his death Stella Isaacs was made Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 1941,[4] promoted to Dame Grand Cross (GBE) in 1944,[5] and then in 1958 made a life peeress as Baroness Swanborough, of Swanborough in the County of Sussex.
Death[edit]
Lord Reading died in London in December 1935 aged 75. After cremation at Golders Green Crematorium his ashes were buried at the nearby Jewish cemetery.[19] The house where he died, No. 32 Curzon Street in Mayfair, has had a blue plaque on it since 1971.[20]
Honours and commemoration[edit]
In addition to five peerages and five knighthoods, Reading received many other honours. In 1925 he was appointed Grand Cordon of the Order of Leopold.[21] He was Captain of Deal Castle and Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, received the freedom of Reading and of London, and was a Bencher and Treasurer of the Middle Temple. He received honorary degrees from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Toronto, Calcutta, Cambridge and Oxford.
Although he had no apparent link with Canada, his eminence was such that the Lord Reading Law Society (founded in 1948 to promote the interests of Jewish members of the Quebec Bar) was named in his honour.[22] A founding chairman of the Palestine Electric Corporation (along with Alfred Mond (father of his daughter in-law) and Herbert Samuel), the Reading Power Station in Tel Aviv, Israel was named in his honour.[23]