Nettie Adler

1868-1950

Politician

Tireless care and campaigning for the London poor led Henrietta Adler, known as “Nettie”, to become one of the first two women on the London County Council, the body that governed London from 1889 to 1965. She was one of the first women to take up new political roles once Britain gave women the vote in the aftermath of World War One.

A daughter and granddaughter of chief rabbis, Adler developed her social conscience when she was barely out of school and would go with her mother Rachel to visit Jewish immigrant families in East End slums.

Like many women of her background, Adler put her energies into philanthropy, supporting training and clubs for young people. When she became vice-president of the pioneering Union of Jewish Women in 1902, the Jewish Chronicle called her “one of the most earnest and unostentatious of Jewish communal workers”.

Her Liberal Party allegiance and choice of fiancé met with disapproval from her father, Chief Rabbi Hermann Adler, who was instinctively a Conservative, and though she rose to become a prominent London politician, she never married.

Adler was one of two women who took up seats on the LCC after an election in 1910, the first that officially allowed women candidates. She represented Hackney Central for the Progressive Party and was deputy chair of the LCC from 1922-23.

Adler was one of three Jewish women to be appointed when women became magistrates in England for the first time in 1920. Sitting as a JP in youth courts, she was internationally renowned as an authority on youth offending and child wage-earning.

Adler stood down from the LCC in 1931 when a resurgence of anti-Jewish feeling made her identity a major election issue. She was made Commander of the British Empire (CBE) in 1934 for her work in London government.

Henrietta (Nettie) Adler
© Illustrated London News Ltd/Mary Evans Picture Library