Excerpt from A History of the Chartist Movement

Julius West was born in St. Petersburg on March 21 (9th O.S.), 1891. In May, when he was two months old, he went to London, where from that time onwards, his father, Mr. Semon Rappoport was correspondent for various Russian papers. At twelve years of age West entered the Haberdashers' (Aske's) School at Hampstead. He left school in 1906, and became a temporary clerk in the Board of Trade, assisting in the preparation of the report on the cost of living in Germany, issued in 1908. On leaving the Board of Trade, he became a junior clerk in the office of the Fabian Society, then in a basement in Clement's Inn. (It was there that in 1908 or 1909 I first saw him.) To get to the Secretary's room one had to pass through the half-daylight of a general office stacked with papers and pamphlets, and on some occasion I received the impression of a new figure beyond the counter, that of a tall, white-faced, stooping youth with spectacles and wavy dark hair, studious-looking, rather birdlike. The impression is still so vivid that I know now I was in a manner aware that he was unusual long before I was conscious of any curiosity about him. I had known him thus casually by sight for some time, without knowing his name, I had known his name and his repute as a precocious boy for some time without linking the name to the person. He was said to read everything and to know a lot of economics, a great many people were getting interested in him, he was called West and was a Russian, a collocation which puzzled me until I learned that he was a Jew from Russia who had adopted an English name. Although still under twenty, he was already, I think, lecturing to small labour groups when I got to know him more intimately.

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