Lady Battersea, daughter of Sir Anthony de Rothschild, who was in his day the main representative of the Rothschild family in the Anglo-Jewish Community, and was one of the founders and first President of the United Synagogue, died yesterday at her home in Cromer in her 89th. year. Her mother, Louisa Montefiore, was a daughter of Abraham Montefiore, a brother of Sir Moses Montefiore.
Although married to a non-Jew, the Rt. Hon. Cyril Flower, M.P., Whip of the Liberal Party in the House of Commons, who afterwards became Lord Battersea, she remained a Jewess, in the same way as did her cousin, Hannah de Rothschild, who married Lord Roseberry, the Liberal Prime Minister, and like Lady Roseberry, who is buried in the Jewish cemetery at Willesden, she, too, is to be buried in the Jewish cemetery at Willesden.
The funeral will take place on Wednesday.
Lady Battersea continued throughout her life to interest herself in Jewish communal affairs, and among other activities she was Vice-President and Honorary Secretary of the Jewish Association for the Protection of Girls and Women. In conjunction with her sister Annie, (the Hon. Mrs. Eliot Yorke) she wrote “The History and Literature of the Israelites”.
She also contributed various articles to magazines describing the Jewish Festivals and ritual, as, for instance, the Seder evening, and Feast of Tabernacles, in the “Sunday Magazine”, and in the “Jewish Chronicle” of 1886 “Princess Sabbath”.
In her article on Tabernacles, Lady Battersea wrote inter alia: The Jews had been agriculturists from early days. Centuries of persecution and the consequence of exile from the fresh and wholesome country into crowded and narrow streets changed their habits and pursuits. They could not be agriculturists, so they took to commerce and when all the most honourable callings were forbidden, they brought their keen intellects and ready wit to bear upon barter and peddling. But on their Festivals their hearts still go forth in prayer for the fertility of the land and in praise for the unperishable gifts of God.
She constantly referred in her articles and public speeches of a general character to her Jewish connections and her interest in Jewish affairs, as, for example, when she was speaking on prison visitation at the Glasgow Conference of the National Union of Women Workers, of which she had been President, when she said: It was in the year 1894 that at the request of the Home Office, I became one of the visitors to the convict prison in Aylesbury. During my many years of experience I can only recall five Jewish convicts. They were visited regularly by the Rev. A. A. Green.
On the death of the late Leopold de Rothschild, the President of the United Synagogue, (his son, Mr. Lionel de Rothschild, is the present President), she published an article in which “as one who had known him from childhood”, she spoke of “his deep and abiding love for and pride in his race and faith” and of how “he had spent his days in generous, considerate actions and in words of kindly encouragement, actions of so unostentatious a character that they were often unsuspected and indeed unknown, except to those who benefited by them”.
And when the two cousins, Captain Neil Primrose, son of the late Lord Rosebery, and Major Evelyn de Rothschild, were killed during the war in Palestine, she wrote:
“The two cousins and friends who have fallen on the same battlefield, in the land of Palestine, have left fragrant memories behind them. To the one the romance of the situation must have forcibly presented itself, when he was advancing to the Holy City where his ancestors had once worshipped in the Temple. There also his cousin, to whom he was devotedly attached, gave his life for his country. Descended on his mother’s side from the same Jewish family, he must likewise have experienced a romantic thrill in the advance.”
Lady Battersea was the friend of Queen Victoria, King Edward and Queen Alexandra, and eight Prime Ministers, including Disraeli and Gladstone, and was well known to many distinguished men and women, among them Thackeray and Lord Morley.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
