Philip Josephs, anarchist tailor (4 Willis St)

Philip Josephs was a Latvian-born Jewish tailor and a central figure in the intellectual and political life of early twentieth-century Wellington dissent and revolt. He used his tailor’s business as a distribution centre for anarchist and free communist pamphlets and periodicals, importing literature by anarchists and communists in Britain and the United States, and journals from figures such as Emma Goldman. Josephs was active in the Anti-Militarist League and featured as a regular speaker on European politics and Anarchist theory at local meetings. He advertised regularly in the Maoriland Worker, both to make a living from his work as a tailor and to promote his anarchist literature.

Want to learn more?

Jared Davidson’s Sewing Freedom: Philip Josephs, Transnationalism and Early New Zealand Anarchism (AK Press, 2013) tells Josephs story in absorbing detail.

Image Credit

Maoriland Worker, 29 October 1913. Reproduced on Papers Past.