Julia Richman

Richman wrote books on curriculum and started a number of school programs, including an optical one, special education for delinquents, chronic absentee students, as well as those who were above average.

[3] In 1866, the family returned to New York in order to give the older children educational advantages not present in Huntington.

She could not be persuaded to go back, but that day the seed was sown which in after years bore the great fruit of her labors in the Council of Jewish Women, in the Chautauqua and in every direction where she could benefit or improve the Sabbath School system or establish the teaching of ethics.

She was a tireless worker in the Educational Alliance and in the early days of the Young Women's Hebrew Association, and in both of these institutions her advice was always sought and usually followed.

During this visit, in a conversation upon religious subjects with Montefiore, she suggested to him the advantages that he could give to the public if he would publish the Bible stories as he had told them to his own child.

At the special meeting which was held in order to make a new appointment, it was unanimously decided to offer the position to Richman upon her return.

Much to their astonishment, for she might have had the best, she chose the lower East Side, and left her uptown home to reside among the people to whose uplift she devoted her life work.

She rented a house in the heart of the Ghetto, had it remodeled and modernized in every respect, and made of it a social settlement for the teachers of the district where they could meet every afternoon or evening.

Each refractory pupil received special instruction and direction by an able teacher, and many boys who had been deemed fit subjects for a reform school became honest, decent citizens.

Her idea was to separate these unfortunates from the other children so that they should not be subjected to the humiliation of being outstripped by others of their own age, and that each child might get the special training that it required.

She knew so well the ill effects of the crowded tenements, with their lack of air and light, and she watched the rapid strides of the terrible white plague.

Then the decks were fitted up with couches, beds, hammocks and awnings, a kitchen and a nurse's room were furnished, and the floating home for consumptives was established.

[2] She was a powerful adviser in the work of the North American Civic League for Immigrants, and many improvements in their mode of dealing with those unhappy people on Ellis Island were due to her suggestions.

In the early spring of 1912, she decided to resign her position on the Board of School Superintendents when the autumn term began, “in order,” as she said, “to give some younger woman a chance.” She had promised to write a book to be published by Macmillan Publishing Company; it was to be called “Forty Years in the New York Public Schools.” She expected to begin the work during the summer vacation, which she planned to spend in Switzerland.

Her friends, Prof. and Mrs. Richard Gottheil, of New York, who remained with her to the end, told her of her condition and she prepared for the operation without any fear.

Three weeks later the remains arrived in New York and the last rites took place in the Temple Ahawath Chesed, where she had been a worshipper.