The Chief Rabbinate of Solomon Hirschell had seen major changes in the community. Jews were beginning to integrate into English society, taking their place (among other areas) in municipal academic and legal spheres. It was felt that the new Chief Rabbi should be a University graduate as well as rabbinically trained. The conference making the appointment included representatives of 19 Provincial communities as well as the five existing Ashkenazi communities in London, and after an election Rabbi Dr Nathan Marcus Adler of Hanover was appointed.
Nathan Marcus Adler soon underlined the authority of his office by issuing a booklet of Laws and regulations "for all the Ashkenazi Synagogues in the British Empire". He was the first Chief Rabbi to undertake regular pastoral tours within the United Kingdom.
During his Chief Rabbinate, the emancipation of Jews within the United Kingdom was completed. Baron Lionel de Rothschild took his seat as an MP in 1858, his son was raised to the peerage as the First Lord Rothschild in 1885, while Sir David Salomons became the first Jewish Lord Mayor of London in 1855.
In 1866, Adler urged the lay leaders of the three City Synagogues - the Great, the New, and the Hambro", and their branch synagogues at Great Portland Street and Bayswater, to form the United Synagogue, established by Act of Parliament in 1870. This union, still the largest religious grouping within the British Jewish community, and taking its religious authority from the Chief Rabbi, would not have come into being without the prestige and encouragement that Adler lent to the proposal.
Adler's health deteriorated in 1879, and his son Hermann Marcus Adler was appointed delegate Chief Rabbi to carry out the duties of the office. When Nathan Marcus Adler died in 1891, Hermann succeeded him as Chief Rabbi.
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