Basil Henriques
Unfortunate customers passing through Thames Magistrates’ Court in Bow Road probably have too much on their mind to spend time looking at the paintings on the walls.
But if they took a few seconds out they would see a portrait of an extraordinary man with an extraordinary name, who dedicated his life to making sure the young people of the East End saw as little of courtrooms as possible.
Basil Lucas Quixano Henriques returned from the First World War a young officer of 28. He was from a good family and had been educated at Harrow School and Oxford University. But like many of his generation who had seen the horrors of the Great War, he came back determined not to settle into the old ways of Edwardian England – he decided to change things for the better.
Before going to fight, Henriques had started his first boys’ club, south of the river in Bermondsey – at the time a strongly Jewish area. But returning to London, he decided to cross the river. The East End was coping with its own huge inpouring of Jewish settlers, displaced from eastern Europe by pogroms and persecution and by the chaos of war.
Basil set up his first “settlement” in Berners Street, off Commercial Road – but don’t look for it on the map, it’s now renamed Henriques Street in his honour.
These were the days before the welfare state and the social services and the settlements performed a vital role for the working people of the area – one of the poorest in London.
As well as fulfilling its spiritual role as a synagogue, the settlement was a meeting place, social club, creche and clinic.
People went along to learn vital skills, such as first aid. And, as a venue for young people to meet, talk, play games and take lessons, it had a vital function in giving the bored youngsters somewhere else to go other than the streets.
The centre was then known as the St George’s Settlement, and the St George’s Jewish Lads’ Club produced a succession of winning football and boxing teams.
Many of the youngsters had been displaced from Russia and Poland. The Russians would conscript lads as young as 12 and send them to fight on the Polish front during the 1914-18 war.
Having fled conscription, the refugees would struggle across Europe, eventually ending up on the docks of east London, young, frightened, penniless and with no English. It was these youngsters that Henriques, changed by the war himself, put on the right track.
When he retired in 1947, having seen war devastate Europe once more, Henriques had a proud record as president of the London Federation of Boys’ Clubs and chairman of the east London Juvenile Court.
Survivor
He died in 1961 but his memory lives on. His settlement wandered the East End under a variety of names before settling in its present home, Beaumont Grove, opposite Stepney Green station.
The Settlement Synagogue, as it is now called, still does its good work, the last survivor of the many settlements that once served the Jewish community of London. And, many years after Basil left the bench, his portrait still casts its watchful eye over the customers of Bow Road Magistrates’ Court.
Further reading
The indiscretions of a warden, Basil Henriques, Methuen, 1937 and Basil Henriques, LL Loewe, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1976.