As information emerged about the risks facing women travelling alone from Eastern Europe – unfulfilled marriage promises, problematic divorces and men seeking women for prostitution rings – women's groups in Britain, Germany and America developed services to aid women and children, their ‘natural clientele’. By the mid-1880s, acting out of Jewish values and Victorian morality, prominent Jewish women began to combat the association of Jews with trafficking by founding a Jewish rescue association. Rescue work attracted a number of Christian and Jewish women who sought to ‘purify’ public and private spheres. Some of the reformers promoted restrictive legislation – a controversial approach for feminists. Religious faith motivated many rescue workers. Jews wanted to challenge public associations of foreigner with ‘Hebrew’ and white slavery. Because prostitution was, as Paul Knepper notes, ‘profoundly embarrassing for Jews concerned with framing Jewish identity within British class, racial and gender sensibilities’, it sparked an atypically visible response.

Drawing on extensive records from the JAPGAW, the Montefiore House School and the Jewish press, this chapter demonstrates not only the perceived dangers facing Jewish girls and women, but the Jewish community's approach to assistance. Given the virtual absence of immigrant voices, gauging the motivations and perceptions of women who strayed from traditional respectability remains a significant challenge. Occasional glimmers of resistance to Jewish communal standards emerge through discussion of behaviours that communal leaders and volunteers deemed inappropriate.