William J. Fishman

William Jack Fishman (born April 1, 1921 in East End , London , † December 22, 2014 ) was a British historian .

Life

William Fishman was born in 1921 to a Russian-Jewish family in the East End of London, where his family ran a tailor shop. When he was 11 years old, his family moved closer to the docks. The family later moved to Hackney . At the age of 14, he left the Central Foundation Grammar School to work as an office worker. At the same time he joined the Labor League of Youth . In October 1936 he took part in the Battle of Cable Street . Fishman later trained to be a teacher. After serving in the British Army during World War II and serving in the Far East , he taught English and history at the Morpeth School in Bethnal Green . He was then headmaster of Tower Hamlets Further Education College from 1954 and studied at the London School of Economics . In 1965 he received a scholarship to Balliol College of Oxford University . In 1969 he published his first book The Insurrectionists , in which he dealt with the influence of the French Revolution on the Russian Revolution. The historian Richard Cobb , whom he met at Balliol College, encouraged Fishman to study the social history of the East End. In 1972 Fishman Barnet Shine became Senior Research Fellow for labor studies at Queen Mary, University of London .

Fishman was visiting professor at the Center for the Study of Migration of the Queen Mary, University of London.

Fishman was married and had two sons.

Publications (selection)

• The Insurrectionists (1969)
• East End Jewish Radicals 1875-1914 (1975)
• The Streets of East London (1979)
• East End 1888 (1988)

Web links

• William Fishman obituary , Dec. 26, 2014, The Guardian