 Joseph Jacobs, writing in the "11th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica" (1911), commented "It is difficult to tell in any one of these cases how far the story is an entire fiction and how far some ingenious impostor took advantage of the existence of the myth".It has been alleged by an 1881 writer, who however cites no instances, that the supposed presence of the Wandering Jew has occasionally been used as a pretext for incursions by Gentiles into Jewish quarters during the late Middle Ages, when the legend was accepted as fact.Another legend about Jews, the so-called "Red Jews", was similarly common in Central Europe in the Middle Ages.