Lord George Gordon (1751–1793) was a British nobleman and politician who served in the House of Commons from 1774 to 1780. In 1779, he founded and led the Protestant Association.
On June 2, 1780, Gordon led a crowd of approximately 50,000 people to Westminster to present a petition opposing Catholic emancipation. The demonstration quickly spiraled into the infamous Gordon Riots. Over several days, rioters destroyed Catholic chapels, looted Catholic homes, burned Newgate Prison, broke open other prisons, and attacked the Bank of England and other public buildings. Order was restored only after the army intervened, leaving about 450 people dead or wounded.
For his role in the riots, Gordon was charged with high treason and imprisoned in the Tower of London. Although confined, he was allowed visitors, including the Methodist leader Rev. John Wesley. Thanks to the brilliant defense of his cousin, Thomas Erskine, he was acquitted after the court ruled that he had acted without treasonous intent.
Gordon's legal troubles, however, were far from over. In 1786 he was excommunicated by the Archbishop of Canterbury for refusing to testify in an ecclesiastical suit. The following year he was convicted of libeling Marie Antoinette, the French ambassador to Great Britain, Jean-Balthazar d'Adhémar, and the English judicial system. After briefly fleeing to the Netherlands, he was ordered to leave, returned to England, was arrested in Birmingham, and in January 1788 was sentenced to five years in prison in Newgate Prison under especially harsh conditions.
In 1787, at the age of thirty-six, Gordon underwent a remarkable transformation. While in Birmingham, he converted to Judaism, underwent bris milah, and took the Hebrew name Yisrael ben Avraham Gordon.
Even while imprisoned, Gordon lived as a scrupulously observant Orthodox Jew. He donned tzitzis and tefillin every day, fasted on the halachically prescribed fast days, and observed Shabbos and Yom Tov. The prison authorities supplied him with kosher meat, wine, and Shabbos challos. They even permitted him to affix a mezuzah to the door of his cell, display the Aseres Hadibros on its wall, and gather a minyan on Shabbos.
His devotion to Torah and mitzvos was uncompromising. Gordon associated only with sincerely observant Jews and refused to have dealings with anyone who disregarded the Torah's commandments. Although he welcomed non-Jewish visitors, he instructed the prison guards to admit Jewish visitors only if they wore a beard and a head covering. He also spent time visiting other prisoners, comforting them with words of encouragement and even playing the violin to lift their spirits.
In October 1793, a typhoid epidemic swept through Newgate Prison, and Gordon contracted the disease. Crowds of prisoners gathered outside his cell awaiting news of his condition, while friends remained at his bedside despite the danger of infection, praying for his recovery. On November 1, 1793 (26th of Cheshvan), Yisrael ben Avraham Gordon passed away at the age of forty-one.