ABRAHAMS, SIR LIONEL

ABRAHAMS, SIR LIONEL (1869–1919), English civil servant and Anglo-Jewish historian, nephew of Israel abrahams . A graduate of Balliol College, Oxford, in 1902 Abrahams became financial secretary for India, in which capacity he successfully reorganized the Indian currency. In 1912 he was appointed assistant undersecretary of state for India. As an Oxford student, he wrote The Expulsion of the Jews from England in 1290 (1895). He contributed a number of important studies on the medieval period to the Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England. He was president of the society from 1916 to 1918. In 1912 he became involved in what became known as the "Indian Silver Case," in which accusations were made that a Jewish merchant bank in London had improperly suggested that an order for silver required by the Indian government be placed with its firm. As a result, antisemitic innuendos about Abrahams and others were made in sections of Britain's press, but those named were cleared of any wrongdoing by a House of Commons Select Committee. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: P.H. Emden, Jews of Britain (1943), 145–6; JHSET, index; The Times (Dec. 1, 1919); JC (Dec. 12, 1919). ADD. BIBLIOGRAPHY: ODNB online. (Cecil Roth / William D. Rubinstein (2nd ed.)