Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 2.djvu/504

 Richmond) to inquire into the charge of slander brought by Sir George Chetwynd against Lord Durham in consequence of words uttered in a speech at the Gimcrack Club dinner. Sir George claimed 20,000l. damages. The trial was held under unusual circumstances at the Law Courts in London, and attracted much attention. The verdict, which exonerated the plaintiff of the graver charges, laid the damages at one farthing (29 June 1889). In 1903 Lowther's health was obviously failing. He sold his horses and was obliged to forgo active work in parliament. There was no appreciable recovery, and on 12 Sept. 1904 he died at Wilton Castle. His body was cremated at Darlington, and his ashes were deposited in Wilton churchyard.

He was unmarried. At his death Wilton Castle passed to his nephew, Mr. John George Lowther.

His portrait, painted by Mr. E. Miller after his death, is at Wilton Castle. Caricature portraits by 'Spy' appeared in 'Vanity Fair' in 1877 and 1900.

 LÖWY, ALBERT or ABRAHAM (1816–1908), Hebrew scholar, born on 8 Dec. 1816, at Aussee in Moravia, was the eldest son of thirteen children (seven sons and six daughters) of Leopold Löwy by his wife Katty. His father's family had been settled for several generations at Aussee, and had produced many learned men, after one of whom, Rabbi Abraham Leipnik, author of a MS. account (in Hebrew) of the destruction of the synagogue in Aussee in 1720, Löwy was called. In 1822 his father left Aussee for Friedland, on the border of Silesia, where he owned a brewery. In 1829 Albert left home for schools in Leipzig, Jagendorf, and Olmütz, and eventually attended the University of Vienna. Among his friends and fellow students there were Moritz Steinschneider, the German Hebraist, and Abraham Benisch [q. v.].

Löwy intended, on the completion of his studies, to migrate to Italy, where Jews enjoyed much liberty. But in 1838, with his two friends, Steinschneider and Benisch, he founded 'Die Einheit,' a society of some two hundred students of the Vienna University, most of them Jews, who were endeavouring to promote the welfare of the Jews, one of their aims being to establish colonies in Palestine. In 1840 Löwy visited England to seek support for the scheme, and there he settled for life. A section of the Jewish community in London was at the time seeking to reform both ritual and practice. The reformers seceded from the main body of their co-religionists, opening on 27 Jan. 1842 the West London Synagogue of British Jews, in Burton Street. Löwy became one of the first two ministers ; David Woolf Marks [q. v. Suppl. II] was the other. With his colleague he edited the prayer-book of the new congregation, which he served until 1892.

In 1870, under the guidance of Löwy and Benisch, the Anglo-Jewish Association was formed in London to champion the cause of persecuted Jews and to maintain Jewish schools in the Orient. In 1874 Löwy, after attending a Jewish conference at Königsberg on the Russo-Jewish question, was sent by the Anglo-Jewish Association on a secret mission to Russia. His report on the position of the Russian Jews was published as an appendix to the 'Annual Statement of the Anglo-Jewish Association' for 1874. Lowy was secretary of the Anglo-Jewish Association from 1875 until his resignation in 1889. On 31 Oct. 1892 he resigned his ministry at the West London Synagogue, but he took part in public affairs until his death in London on 21 May 1908; he was buried at the Ball's Pond cemetery of the West London Synagogue of British Jews.

Löwy was an accurate and erudite Hebrew scholar. In 1872 Lord Crawford entrusted him with the preparation of a catalogue of his unique collection of Samaritan literature, and in 1891 he completed his chief task as a scholar, the 'Catalogue of Hebraica and Judaica in the Library of the Corporation of the City of London.' He engaged in the controversy over the Moabite stone at the Louvre, the genuineness of which he warmly contested. In 1903 he printed for private circulation 'A Critical Examination of the so-called Moabite Inscription in the Louvre.' Löwy also won repute as a teacher of Hebrew, and among his pupils were Archbishop Tait, the Marquess of Bute, and Thomas Chenery, editor of 'The Times.' He was a member of the council of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, and founded in 1870 the Society of Hebrew Literature (continued until 1877), and edited its publications. In 1893 he was made honorary LL.D. of St. Andrews.

In January 1851 Löwy married Gertrude (died January 1879), eldest daughter of Israel Levy Lindenthal, minister of the 