THE first Anglo-Jewish barrister was Sir Francis Goldsmid (1808‒78), who was called to the Bar in Lincoln's Inn in January 1833 and was elevated to the rank of Queen's Counsel in 1858; he practised for over twenty-five years, retiring after succeeding to his father's title and estates in 1859. To avoid breaking the sabbath, Goldsmid practised in the Court of Chancery, which dealt with property disputes and where it was always much easier to avoid inconveniently timed appearances than in the common law courts. In 1860 he was elected to Parliament, becoming only the fourth Jewish MP. Sitting as a Liberal, he was dubbed ‘the Member for Jewry’ and made powerful speeches in defence of the Jews of the Danubian provinces, Russia, and Poland. The first Jew to appear regularly in the common law courts was Sir John Simon (1818‒97); born in Jamaica, he was called to the Bar in the Middle Temple in 1842 and rose to the rank of serjeant-at-law in 1864 and QC in 1868. Earlier, in 1858, he acted as assistant to judges in county courts, becoming the first Jew to hold judicial office in England. As a serjeant, Simon later acted as a commissioner of assize in the Manchester and Liverpool criminal courts and presided over the City of London Court. Among his notable achievements as a barrister, Simon assisted Edwin James QC, MP in the defence of Dr Bernard, a radical French physician and political refugee in Britain, when in 1858 he was charged with complicity in the attempted assassination of Napoleon III by Orsini and the murder of others in Paris. Simon, who at one point had thought of becoming a rabbi, was one of the first English Jews to deny the authenticity of the Oral Law and was an early stalwart of the religious reform movement, which perhaps explains his ability to bridge the worlds of Judaism and the law. In 1868 he was elected MP for Dewsbury, becoming known as ‘the Member for Jewry’ on Goldsmid's death, but his sharp criticism of Gladstone for failing adequately to condemn the anti-Jewish measures enacted by the Romanian government—which in 1866 declared Jews members of a ‘vagabond race’, subject to expulsion—kept him out of office. An advanced Liberal, he was a supporter of home rule for Ireland and the abolition of capital punishment.