Lady Rachel Simon

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Lady Rachel Simon
BornRachel Salaman
(1823-08-01)1 August 1823
London, England
Died7 July 1899(1899-07-07) (aged 75)
London, England
LanguageEnglish
Spouse
​
​
(m. 1843; died 1897)​

Lady Rachel Simon (née Salaman; 1 August 1823 – 7 July 1899) was an English Jewish author.

Biography[edit]

Lady Rachel Simon was born in 1823, the fifth daughter of Alice (née Cowen) and Simeon Kensington Salaman.[1][2] Her father was clothing supplier to the British Army and warden of the Western Synagogue,[3] and she was the sister of Annette, Charles, and Julia, and Rose Emma Salaman.[4] Lady Simon grew up amid the intellectual and refined surroundings of a home which was the rendezvous of many distinguished people.

On 12 July 1843, she married barrister John Simon, who would later serve as Serjeant-at-Law and Liberal Member of Parliament.[5] A month after their marriage, the young couple left England for Jamaica, and on arrival there took up their residence in Spanish Town.[6] Their daughter Zillah was born in 1844, the first of eight children, not long before the family immigrated to England when Rachel's health suffered in the tropical climate.[7] They lived for a number of years in Wavertree, Liverpool and settled in London in 1856.[6]

Lady Simon kept from her seventeenth year a diary, from which she published a selection covering a period of fifty years under the title Records and Reflections. The book, with which Lady Simon sought "to remove some of the prevailing misconceptions in regard to [her] ancestral religion," was released in 1894 to favourable reviews.[8][9] She wrote also a work on the Psalms, entitled Beside the Still Waters (1899).[10]

She died in London on 7 July 1899. Lady Simon was outlived by her five surviving children—two sons and three daughters.[11] Her son Oswald John Simon (1855–1932) was a prominent communal worker and author, who served as member of the Council of the Anglo-Jewish Association from 1882 to 1911, and then as vice-president until his death.[12]

Bibliography[edit]

  • Simon, Rachel (1894). Records and Reflections Selected from Her Writings During Half a Century (April 3rd, 1840, to April 3rd, 1890). London: Wertheimer, Lea & Co.
  • Simon, Rachel (1899). Beside the Still Waters: Reflections on the Book of Psalms, Illustrated by Parallel verses from Other Portions of the Scriptures. London: Greenberg & Co.

References[edit]

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Jacobs, Joseph; Lipkind, Goodman (1905). "Simon, Lady Rachel". In Singer, Isidore; et al. (eds.). The Jewish Encyclopedia. Vol. 11. New York: Funk & Wagnalls. p. 373–374.

  1. ^ Mair, Robert Henry, ed. (1882). Debrett's Illustrated House of Commons, and the Judicial Bench. London: Dean and Son. p. 204.
  2. ^ Rottenberg, Dan (1995). Finding Our Fathers: A Guidebook to Jewish Genealogy. Genealogical Publishing Company. p. 343. ISBN 978-0-8063-1151-7.
  3. ^ "Visiting card of Sir John and Lady Simon, 36 Tavistock Square" (20 August 1893). Gaster Papers, ID: GASTER/1/A/SIM/1. London: GB 0103, University College London Archives.
  4. ^ Klaidman, Stephen (2015). Sydney and Violet. New York: Anchor Books. p. 33. ISBN 978-0-307-74211-7.
  5. ^ Russell, Cyril; Lewis, Harry Samuel (1900). "Jewish Books for Jewish Readers". The Jew in London. London: T. Fisher Unwim.
  6. ^ a b Peixotto, George D. M. (1888). Peixotto, Benjamin F. (ed.). "The Lesson of a Life: Biographical Sketch of Sir John Simon, Q.C., M.P." The Menorah. 5. New York: Menorah Publishing Company: 309–313.
  7. ^ Green, David B. (9 December 2016). "1818: Jamaican Who Wouldn't Become a Rabbi but an English MP Is Born". Haaretz. Retrieved 27 May 2019.
  8. ^ Summers, Anne (2017). Christian and Jewish Women in Britain, 1880-1940: Living with Difference. Palgrave Critical Studies of Antisemitism and Racism. London: Palgrave Macmillan. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-42150-6. ISBN 978-3-319-42150-6. OCLC 967265250.
  9. ^ Law, Alice (1894). Abrahams, Israel; Montefiore, Claude Goldsmid (eds.). "Review: Records and Reflections, Selected from Her Writings during Half a Century (April 3rd, 1840, to April 3rd, 1890) by Lady Simon". The Jewish Quarterly Review. 7 (1). London: D. Nutt: 164–168. doi:10.2307/1450338. hdl:2027/hvd.hw5isu. JSTOR 1450338.
  10. ^ Berenbaum, Michael; Skolnik, Fred, eds. (2007). "Salaman". Encyclopaedia Judaica (2nd ed.). Detroit: Macmillan Reference. ISBN 978-0-02-866097-4.
  11. ^ Carlyle, E. I. (2004). "Simon, Sir John". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/25576. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  12. ^ Rubinstein, William D.; Jolles, Michael A.; Rubinstein, Hillary L., eds. (2011). The Palgrave Dictionary of Anglo-Jewish History. London: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 918. ISBN 978-0-230-30466-6. OCLC 793104984.
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