{{Short description|British doctor and mohel}} {{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}} '''Jacob Snowman''' (24 November 1871 – 28 February 1959)<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.geni.com/people/Jacob-Snowman-M-D-M-R-C-S/6000000081968152154 |title=Dr. Jacob Snowman, M.D., M.R.C.S. |date=24 November 1871 |publisher=GENi |accessdate=April 28, 2020}}</ref> was a British doctor and mohel,<ref name=Rashty25Jul>{{cite news|work=The Jewish Chronicle|url=http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/109723/bring-me-royal-baby-and-i’ll-give-him-snip-says-top-mohel|title=Bring me the royal baby and I'll give him the snip, says top mohel|date=July 25, 2013|accessdate=December 22, 2015|first=Sandy|last=Rashty}}</ref> notable for having reportedly circumcised King Charles III in December 1948,<ref name=Darby13Oct>{{cite journal|url=https://www.academia.edu/10049615|title=The British royal family's circumcision tradition: Genesis and evolution of a contemporary legend |first1=Robert|first2=John|last1=Darby|last2=Cozijn|journal=SAGE Open|date=October 13, 2013|volume=3 |issue=4 |doi=10.1177/2158244013508960 |s2cid=146483223 |accessdate=December 22, 2015|doi-access=free}}</ref> and possibly other members of the British nobility and royal family.<ref name=Isaaman28Aug/>
Snowman was the son of Abraham Snowman (1849–1918), a picture dealer. He was the older brother to both painter Isaac Snowman (1873–1947) and jeweller Emanuel Snowman (1886–1970), who married into the prominent Wartski family of jewellers and became the company chairman.<ref name=Isaaman28Aug>{{cite news|url=http://www.thejc.com/arts/books/143258/geoffrey-munn-a-world-authority-faberge-jewellery-and-wartski-dynasty|title=Geoffrey Munn - a world authority on Faberge jewellery and the Wartski dynasty|work=The Jewish Chronicle|first=Gerald|last=Isaaman|date=August 28, 2015|accessdate=December 22, 2015}}</ref> Wartski has enjoyed generations of Royal patronage, supplying the Welsh gold wedding bands for Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles, as well as the bands worn by Prince William and Catherine Middleton.<ref name= Isaaman28Aug/>
John Cozijn and Robert Darby, who is an historian of the British circumcision movement (though circumcision is now uncommon in the United Kingdom),<ref>Darby, Robert. ''A Surgical Temptation: The Demonization of the Foreskin and the Rise of Circumcision in Britain'', Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2005, pp. 368.</ref> have suggested that the British Royal Family invited Rabbi Snowman ("rabbi" is an honorific commonly afforded to mohels) to circumcise the infant Prince Charles at Buckingham Palace most likely because of his extensive experience with circumcision, and perhaps because non-Jewish family physicians were deemed less familiar or adept with the procedure (which was widely performed on British middle- and upper-class male infants from the 1890s through the 1940s).<ref name=Darby13Oct/> Darby and Cozijn have cast doubt on claims, arising in the 1990s and widely reported after the birth of Prince George in 2013, that a royal family "circumcision tradition" extends back to Queen Victoria's era, or even to George I in the early 18th century,<ref name=Rashty25Jul/><ref name=Wallop31Mar>{{cite news|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/10201882/Circumcision-is-one-of-the-oddities-of-the-Royal-Family.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130728051107/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/10201882/Circumcision-is-one-of-the-oddities-of-the-Royal-Family.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=July 28, 2013|title='Circumcision is one of the oddities of the Royal Family'|date=March 31, 2015|accessdate=December 22, 2015|work=The Telegraph|first=Harry|last=Wallop}}</ref> grounded in secretive Davidic or British Israelist religious tradition.<ref name=Darby13Oct/>
Snowman wrote specialist articles and at least four books, including ''Jewish Law and Sanitary Science'' (1896),[https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/320177240] ''Clinical Surgical Diagnosis'' (Second English Edition, 1917),[https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/776289786] ''Lenzmann's Manual of Emergencies, Medical, Surgical and Obstetric: their Pathology, Diagnosis and Treatment'' (1919, based upon ''Emergencies in Medical Practice'' by {{Interlanguage link|Richard Lenzmann|de}}),[https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/9114525] a revised ''Manual of Emergencies, Medical, Surgical, and Obstetric'' (1926),[https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/504846706] ''A Short History of Talmudic Medicine'' (with thirteen editions between 1935 and 1974),[https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1205856] and ''The Surgery of Ritual Circumcision'' (1904).<ref>{{Cite book |last=Snowman |first=Jacob |url=http://archive.org/details/b28091504 |title=The Surgery of Ritual Circumcision |date=1904 |publisher=London : published under the auspices of the Medical Board of the Initiation Society |others=Wellcome Library}}</ref> The latter book was published in at least three distinct editions, the last appearing posthumously in 1962 under the co-authorship of his son Leonard Snowman (1900–1976).<ref>{{Cite web |last=Snowman |first=Jacob |date=1962 |title=The Surgery of Ritual Circumcision |url=https://www.worldcat.org/title/504846719 |access-date=2022-09-10 |website=www.worldcat.org}}</ref>
==References== {{reflist}}
==External links== * {{Internet Archive author |sname=Jacob Snowman |birth=1871 |death=1959}} {{authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Snowman, Jacob}} Category:20th-century British medical doctors Category:Circumcision Category:English people of Polish-Jewish descent Category:Jewish English writers Category:Mohalim Category:1871 births Category:1959 deaths Jacob