James (Jacob) Picciotto

James Picciotto was born in Aleppo, Syria, where his father was a merchant of Italian ancestry. They migrated to London when James was a boy, living initially at 3 Dean Street (now Sun Street), Finsbury, then at 8 Milner Square in Barnsbury, and later at Bingham Place (no longer extant) on New North Road.

James was a stockbroker by trade, and a member of Council of Jews College, but is remembered today chiefly as a writer. After penning a series of popular articles for the Jewish Chronicle, he consolidated them into a book, Sketches of Anglo-Jewish History (1875). This charming and very readable work gave a wider audience a good insight into the trials and achievements of Britain’s growing Jewish population. He focussed especially, but by no means exclusively, on the largely London-based Sephardi community, for which he was able to undertake extensive research in the archives of Bevis Marks Synagogue.

A lengthy and favourable review in The Times gained the book a wide audience, laying the ground for the Anglo-Jewish Historical Exhibition of 1887 and the establishment of the Jewish Historical Society of England in 1893. He also translated several Jewish works into English, so bringing them too to a wider audience.