Lord Rothschild and the Barber: The Struggle to Establish the London Jewish Hospital

One day, in January 1997, a group of immigrant, Yiddish-speaking working men met in the kitchen of a basement flat in Sydney Street, Stepney, in the East End of London. Their leader was Isador Berliner, a barber, who had come to the UK from Russia in 1891. He knew from his own experience that Jewish immigrants who did not speak English felt very uneasy when they became patients in hospital. He planned to give them peace of mind by building a hospital, supported by public subscriptions, that would be under Jewish management, and staffed by Jewish doctors and nurses who could speak Yiddish.