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Rufus Daniel Isaacs, 1st Marquess of Reading (10 October 1860 – 30 December 1935) was the Viceroy of India (1921–25), barrister, jurist and the last member of the official Liberal Party to serve as Foreign Secretary. He was the second practising Jew to be a member of the British cabinet (the first being Herbert Samuel,〔Although Samuel's religious views were generally considered to be atheist, he remained an observant Jew to please his wife: see Isaacs could be considered the first ''believing'' Jew to be a member of the Cabinet.〕 who was also a member of the Asquith Government), the first Jew to be Lord Chief Justice of England, and the first British Jew to be raised to a marquessate. ==Biography== The son of a Jewish fruit merchant at Spitalfields, Rufus Daniel Isaacs was educated at University College School and then entered the family business at the age of 15. In 1876–77 he served as a ship's boy and later worked as a jobber on the stock-exchange from 1880–84. He entered the Middle Temple to study law, and was called to the Bar in 1887.〔''The Concise Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, 1992.〕 He was appointed a QC in 1898. In 1887 he married Alice Edith Cohen, who suffered from a chronic physical disability and died of cancer in 1927, after 40 years of marriage, and a year after Reading's Indian viceroyalty ended. He then married Stella Charnaud, the first Lady Reading's secretary. His second marriage lasted until his own death in 1935. After his death Stella Isaacs was made Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 1941, promoted to Dame Grand Cross (GBE) in 1944, and then in 1958 made a life peeress as ''Baroness Swanborough, of Swanborough in the County of Sussex''. Isaacs lived at Foxhill House in Earley, adjoining Reading, and was elevated to the peerage as Baron Reading, of Erleigh in the County of Berkshire, in 1914, and continued to rise in the peerage: he was created Viscount Reading, of Erleigh in the County of Berkshire, in 1916; Earl of Reading along with the subsidiary title of Viscount Erleigh, of Erleigh in the County of Berkshire, in 1917; and eventually Marquess of Reading in 1926. His marquessate was the highest rank in the British peerage ever achieved by a Jew. He was knighted in 1910, made a KCVO in 1911, a GCB in 1915, a GCSI and GCIE in 1921 (upon appointment as Viceroy of India) and a GCVO in 1922. Although he had no apparent link with Canada, his eminence was such that the Lord Reading Law Society (founded in 1948 to promote the interests of Jewish members of the Quebec Bar) was named in his honour.〔(【引用サイトリンク】publisher=The Lord Reading Law Society )〕 Lord Reading died in London in December 1935 aged 75. After cremation at Golders Green Crematorium his ashes were buried at the nearby Jewish cemetery. The house where he died, No. 32 Curzon Street in Mayfair, has had a blue plaque on it since 1971.〔(【引用サイトリンク】publisher=openplaques.org )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Rufus Isaacs, 1st Marquess of Reading」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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