Special Taxation of the Jews

Special Taxation of the Jews.

(II.)

IN THE WEST INDIAN COLONIES.

The system of imposing a separate tax upon Jews proposed in England in the year 1689 was already in force in the West Indian Colonies. It seems to have been first imposed in Barbados. There these taxes were levied in kind (so many pounds of sugar) for local purposes.1

In the case of Jamaica we have more precise accounts available. In that island we know that when fresh taxation was imposed in 1686 the question was put in the Legislative Assembly ” Whether Jews that are shopkeepers as freeholders pay ?5 or ?3. Voted ?3.” At this time, therefore, it appears that the impost took the form of a poll tax not unlike the special poll tax upon Jews in force in England in the years 1689-91; but in 1688 it took the more obnoxious form of a lump

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Written by

H. S. Q. Henriques

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• THE JEWISH HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF ENGLAND
• Tallies and Receipt Rolls
• Some Medieval Notes
• Racial Origins of Jewish Types. Presidential Address (1920)
• Perkin Warbeck and His Jewish Master
• Reflections on the History of the Anglo-Jewish Community. Presidential Address (1920)
• Hebrew Loyalty under the First Four Georges
• Ephraim Luzzatto (1729—1792)
• The Legal Position of the Jews in pre-expulsion England, as shown by the Plea Rolls of the Jewish Exchequer
• Special Taxation of the Jews
• Proposals for Special Taxation of the Jews after the Revolution. Presidential Address (1918)
• The Peace Banquet
• PREFACE.