Jews who helped make the health service.

Abstract

The Royal College of General Practitioners recently staged an exhibition on ‘Migrants Who Made the NHS’ for the health service’s 70th anniversary, but it was only by chance when I passed the premises of the royal college that I stopped, went in, and saw it; and was immediately struck by the parallels between the experience of the South Asian doctors and the Jews who had entered the medical profession earlier in the last century. A study published in the 1990s in the BMJ showed that candidates with Asian names were much less likely to be called for interviews than candidates with equivalent qualifications but with English surnames.1 Similarly, during the 1920s and 1930s, many newly qualified Jewish doctors Anglicised their surnames, and sometimes their first names, in order to conceal their Jewish origin and to help their career advancement. Hence in Leeds, for example, Israel Liberman changed his name to John Morrison Lever and Jacob Rosencwige became Jack Rose.2 On 21 June 1930 an advertisement appeared in the BMJ in the following terms: ‘Wanted, Midlands, Assistant [doctor] … male. Panel 1,950. Receipts £2,700. Good House and garden available. No Jews or men of colour’ 2 Similar advertisements appeared in 1937 and 1938. To circumvent these difficulties, Jewish doctors purchased their practices, usually beginning their career in working-class neighbourhoods. In London, at this time, there were agencies that for a commission found practices for doctors to purchase; and one …