 When a wave of pogroms swept the Russian Empire in 1881, most notably the Kiev pogrom, charitable funds were raised in London under the aegis of the Mansion House Committee, a group created for the purpose.When the Committee announced that the funds would be used to help the Jewish refugees resettle in America, Oliphant published an article in The Times on February 15, 1881 asserting that Jews who chose to settle in Palestine would have their religion safeguarded; his article met with such enthusiasm among Polish and Russian Jews that the Mansion House Committee appointed him commissioner to Galicia.Oliphant and his wife, Alice, who had reunited in 1882, traveled to Vienna and Galicia, meeting with representatives of Eastern Jews and promising that "as soon as your Christian sympathizers in England are convinced the Jews fleeing from Russia can settle with safety in the land of their ancestors, then they will contribute thousands, I may well say, hundreds of thousands of pounds to promote this great object."