January 21, 1864

A Place: Spitalfields , an east London slum, a furrier's home and work place, where:

...over everything was the trail of the fur. The air was full of a fine fluff —a million little hairs floated about the room covering everything, insinuating themselves everywhere, getting down the backs of the workers and tickling them, getting into their lungs and making them cough, getting into their food and drink and sickening them till they learnt callousness. They awoke with “furred” tongues, and they went to bed with them. The irritating filaments gathered on their clothes, on their faces, on the crockery, on the sofa, on the mirrors (big and little), on the bed, on the decanters, on the sheet that hid the Sabbath clothes— an impalpable down overlaying everything, penetrating even to the drinking-water in the board-covered zinc bucket, and covering “Rebbitzin,” the household cat, with foreign fur.

A Time: 1892, when Jewish immigrants are becoming English citizens.

An Observer: Israel Zangwill (January 21, 1864 to August 1, 1926) , teacher in the Jewish Free School (funded by Rothschild beneficence) and

Author of this sketch, excerpted from "Flutter Duck" a story in Children of the Ghetto, included in Works of Israel Zangwill (1921).