Menken, Alice Davis, 1870-1936

Alice Davis Menken (1870-1936)

Alice Davis was born on August 4, 1870, in New York City. She was the third of the seven children of Michael Marks and Miriam Maduro Peixotto Davis, and was descended from several prominent European Sephardic families. She was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution on her mother's side.

Harold Davis Menken, was born in 1895 . In 1896, she helped to establish the Sisterhood of Congregation Shearith Israel, and she served as its president from 1900 to 1929 . She began her social relief work in the Sisterhood's settlement house on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, the "Neighborhood House."

Through this settlement house work, Menken became involved in the problem of delinquency among Jewish women. Much of this delinquency was connected to the white slave trade, as traders preyed on the girls and young women who immigrated alone to the United States. In 1908, Menken founded a Sisterhood committee to work in cooperation with the New York City Probation Department in the Women's Night Court, assisting delinquent Jewish women involved in the criminal justice system.

Menken was also involved in the founding of the Jewish Board of Guardians, was the chair of the Department of Court, Probation and Parole of the Board of Guardians' Women's Division, and was its vice president at the time of her death. She also chaired a committee of the Council of Jewish Women which worked with women paroled from New York State prisons.

Menken helped to found the Jewish Big Sister movement in 1911, and in 1920 was appointed by New York Governor Alfred E. Smith to the Board of Managers of the New York State Reformatory for Women.

Menken died in New York on March 23, 1936 .

References: The Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. 7.

From the guide to the Alice Davis Menken Papers, undated, 1882-1936, (American Jewish Historical Society)