Mortimer L. Schiff, the banker and philanthropist, died here suddenly to-day at the age of 54. He was the son of the great Jewish philanthropist, Jacob H. Schiff, who was in his time the recognised leader of American Jewry, and a brother-in-law of Felix M. Warburg, the President of the Joint Distribution Committee and leader of the Jewish Agency, Mrs. Warburg being his sister. He was a member of the famous banking house of Kuhn, Loeb and Company, of which Mr. Felix M. Warburg is also a member.
His great interest was the boy scout movement, to which he gave large sums of money. He was for many years Vice-President and International Commissioner of the Boy Scouts of America, and recently he was appointed President.
During the Great War, he was a Major in the Officers’ Reserve Corps. He was a member of the Commission of Eleven to co-ordinate Army Service Agencies, a member of the Board of Directors of the United War Work Campaign, a member of the Liberty Loan and War Savings Commission and similar bodies. He was also Chairman of the Finance Committee of the Jewish Welfare Board during the war. He had served on various State Commissions and had spoken and written on various economic subjects. He was a generous contributor to many Jewish and general charities and welfare organisations.
Mr. Schiff was also much interested in Jewish literary records and some years ago he provided the funds to enable the Jewish Theological Seminary to purchase a group of rare volumes containing records of the Inquisition, proceedings against Jews in Spain, Portugal and Sicily, and a number of previously unknown poems by Solomon Ibn Gabirol. Professor Alexander Marx, the librarian of the Jewish Theological Seminary of New York, discovered the books on a trip which he made to Italy and when he appealed for the funds to enable the Seminary to purchase them Mr. Mortimer Schiff contributed the entire amount needed. On another occasion Mr. Schiff presented the Jewish Theological Seminary of America with a Haggadah on vellum, written in 1454 in Cologne, with illuminations. There is only one other similarly illuminated Haggadah, it was stated, which is in the British Museum.
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.
