The Legalised Cruelty of Shechita: The Jewish Method of Cattle-Slaughter Booklet 1940

Arnold Leese was born in Lancashire, England, in 1878. He graduated from the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons in 1903 and worked for six years in India, where he became an expert on treating camels (in the title of his autobiography, he described himself as an “Anti-Jewish Camel-Doctor”). Upon his return to England, he became heavily involved in the fascist movement in Britain, and was outspoken in his anti-democratic and antisemitic views. He was the leader of the Imperial Fascist League (IFL), which was founded in 1928. The IFL published a newsletter called The Fascist, which the New York Times described in 1936 as “violently anti-Semitic.” In 1933 and 1934, The Fascist openly backed Adolf Hitler, rebranding itself as “the organ of racial Fascism” and adopting the swastika on its masthead. Leese personally espoused extreme anti-Jewish sentiment as well, including publicly advocating for the extermination of Jews via the lethal chamber as early as 1931. He began publicly accusing Jewish people of ritual murder in 1932, and in 1936 he was arrested and tried for seditious libel and causing public mischief. He was acquitted of the libel charge, but received six months’ imprisonment for public mischief. Following World War II, Leese continued publishing anti-Jewish sentiment in his newsletter The Gothic Ripples and began publishing anti-Black sentiments as well. Leese died in 1956.

Sources: Macklin, G. (2020). Failed Führers: A History of Britain’s Extreme Right (1st ed.). Routledge. Briton imprisoned for libeling Jews. (September 22, 1936). The New York Times, 20.

This booklet is a criticism of the exception to the 1933 Slaughter of Animals Act that allowed for Jewish butchers to slaughter animals without stunning them first. This practice, called shechita or shehitah, consists of the animal’s throat being cut with a sharp knife by a trained butcher called a shochet. This practice must be followed in order for the meat to be considered kosher under Jewish religious law. Leese argued that this practice constituted animal cruelty and claimed that animal protection societies and experts who did not oppose this practice did so due to Jewish or Masonic financial influence or relationships. He also claimed that, since the hindquarter meat of animals slaughtered in shechita was frequently sold for Gentile consumption, the practice of shechita was primarily a method of collecting shochet fees in order to fund Jewish education and charities.

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[Identification of item], The Legalised Cruelty of Shechita: The Jewish Method of Cattle-Slaughter Booklet, MSS 00489, Special Collections Research Center, North Carolina State University Libraries, Raleigh, NC

Purchase, 2025 July (Accession 2025.0093).

Finding aid written by Katie Bushman, July 2025.