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"He was an engaging advocate: a slim, taut figure, with striking, chiselled features, and a melodious, beautifully modulated voice, delicate hands, firmly planted in the lapels of his coat, and an alert, compelling glance. Isaacs developed a good reputation for cross-examination. He continued with his legal career and had several successes, including his defence of The Star newspaper in a libel action involving Joseph Chamberlain, the prosecution of the fraudulent company promoter Whitaker Wright, who committed suicide by swallowing cyanide in a court anteroom immediately after being convicted, and the defence of Sir Edward Russell on a charge of criminal libel and of Robert Sievier, a racehorse trainer, on a blackmail charge.
![lord alexander rufus issacs lord alexander rufus issacs](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/qzwbYkPCeZQ/maxresdefault.jpg)
Rufus Isaacs was elected to represent Reading at a by-election in August, 1904. This court ruling exposed trade unions to being sued every time it was involved in an industrial dispute. Up until this time it was assumed that unions could not be sued for acts carried out by their members. As a result of the case the union was fined £23,000. Isaacs was an active member of the Liberal Party and as a lawyer he represented the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants when it was sued by the Taff Vale Railway Company in 1901 for losses during a strike. to prepare for the day's work, arriving "fresh and smiling" at his chambers.
![lord alexander rufus issacs lord alexander rufus issacs](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/07/14/article-1199690-03C482810000044D-317_235x346.jpg)
Isaacs was able to do with little sleep, and often got up at 4 a.m. He practised chiefly in the commercial court or before special juries, occasionally in the divorce court or the Old Bailey. Isaacs set up his own chambers and was a great success and after fifteen years he had an annual income of £30,000. According to a friend "the Isaacs were a remarkably good-looking couple". Isaacs was called to the bar on 17th November 1887, and three weeks later married Alice Cohen at the West London Synagogue. His father agreed to send him to study law at the Middle Temple.
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At first he was successful but after an economic downturn and by 1884 he was £8,000 in debt. In 1879 he finally abandoned the family business to work in the foreign market at the stock exchange. Isaacs was sent to Europe to learn languages and the fruit import business. In 1873 he entered University College School in Gower Street, London, where the headmaster noted his promise but his father, seeing no future for him in higher education, removed him after less than a year in order to prepare him for the family business. At all these schools he was precociously bright and exceedingly disruptive. His father was a successful fruit importer who was based in Spitalfields.Īccording to his biographer, Antony Lentin: "Rufus was sent away to school from an early age: to a kindergarten at Gravesend between the ages of five and seven to a school in Brussels to learn French then for some years as a boarder at an Anglo-Jewish school in Regent's Park. Rufus Isaacs, the second son and fourth of the nine children of Joseph Isaacs and his wife, Sarah Davis Isaacs, was born in London on 10th October 1860. Rufus Isaacs, 1st Marquess of Reading Sections