Aron Benedictus Goldsmid Cassel Segal

http://www.dutchjewry.org/genealogy/asser/267.htm

Aaron F. Goldsmid: London merchant and founder of the Goldsmid family of England; born at Amsterdam; died June 3, 1782. He was the son of Benedict Goldsmid, a Hamburg merchant. In 1765 he left Holland with his family to settle in London, where he founded the firm of Aaron Goldsmid & Son, subsequently Goldsmid & Eliason. The firm of Aaron Goldsmid & Son experienced serious reverses through the failure of Clifford & Sayer, one of the principal houses in Holland. Hence only George, the eldest son, entered into partnership with his father. The other sons founded new businesses for themselves in which they amassed large fortunes. Goldsmid left four sons and four daughters. The second son, Asher, was one of the founders of the firm Mocatta & Goldsmid, bullion-brokers to the Bank of England. Benjamin and Abraham were famous as financiers and philanthropists.

Bibliography: Levy Alexander, Memoirs of Benjamin Goldsmid of Roehampton, 1808;

James Picciotto, Sketches of Anglo-Jewish History.J. I. H.

An Anglo-Jewish Family1

By Albert M. Hyamson

I

PROPOSE this evening to sketch for you the story of an Anglo-Jewish family,

one familiar to all of you by name, to many in person, which may be taken to some

extent as typical of the families, British for three generations or more, that help

to make up the Anglo-Jewry of today. I do not suggest that the story of this family

is typical of all or of most of the families that were active and flourished in England a

century ago, nor still less is it typical of most of the families whose members are today

active in Anglo-Jewish affairs. But it is typical of a group of families with whom the

care of Jewish interests in England rested a century and a century and a half ago, who,

with single-hearted devotion, successfully shouldered their responsibilities, and, although

they did not perhaps conform in detail to what it is the custom today to describe as

democratic standards, were yet fully representative of the Community, interpreted its

wishes, furthered all its reasonable desires and enjoyed its complete confidence. The

story of this family and of others, its contemporaries, covers the great period of Anglo-

Jewish history: great in the sense that the influence of Anglo-Jewry was active for

good throughout the Jewish world, great in the fact that the standing of and respect

for Anglo-Jewry was at its pinnacle in non-Jewish as well as in Jewish circles everywhere,

great in the sense that—and in this respect in common with the people of England as

a whole—the standard of contentment and therefore of real happiness and of real comfort

was probably higher than it had ever been previously or has been since.

The era in Jewish history covered by the story of this family coincided with that

of the long deferred attainment of the realization of an ideal that had possessed the

thoughts and dreams of a large part of European and of British Jewry. The story opens

in what may be termed the ghetto period of Jewish history and, like all the histories

of Anglo-Jewish families, it opens on the Continent, the home of its ancestors for almost

2,000 years. It covers the era of emancipation. Its earlier members were compelled

to limit their public activities to the concerns of their own smaller community. The

centre of these activities was necessarily in the synagogue—but the synagogue in the

widest sense,—that of the centre of Jewish life. Step by step, in this country, from

generation to generation, the limitations on the public activity of Jews were removed

and with the loosening of every restriction the public-spirited activities of the members

of this family extended. Generation by generation, almost year by year, they became

to a greater and greater extent British citizens in the widest sense. But entry into this

wider sphere did not lessen their responsibilities, or diminish their realization of them,

to the smaller community of which they were also members. They took their share

in the work of the nation and at the same time retained the share that they had inherited

from their fathers in the work of their Community. The members of this small group

of families realized in themselves the ideal of English Jew, both English and Jewish.

The family whose story I am to sketch this evening has given during the past century

and a half heads to the synagogue and to many of our principal institutions. At the

same time, as soon as the opportunity came, it gave also legislators to the state, ornaments

to the professions and leaders on the battlefield. These words indicate the definite

1 Presidential address delivered before the Jewish Historical Society of England on 24th October,

1946.

b*

1

2

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offices its members held. But the influence of a man is often independent of his office.

The latter comes merely to clothe that influence, to crystallize it. And so it was in this

instance. Seven members of this family are immortalized in the British Valhalla, for

so I may term the Dictionary of National Biography. Of these seven, one was a states-

man and a lawyer; three of them shone in public finance, I might say in financial

statesmanship; two also through nation-wide philanthropy; one was a distinguished

Anglo-Indian civilian; and another a soldier, explorer and orientalist. The first four

and also the fifth—a woman—all shone also in the annals of Anglo-Jewry. There are

not many English families, even apart from those limited to a century and a half of life

in England, six sons and one daughter of which have been selected by the very careful

and scrupulous editors of the Dictionary of National Biography for the distinction of

inclusion in its Valhalla.

It is now time I suppose for me to give the name of the family to which I am alluding,

although many of you I expect have by now realized this. The Goldsmid family,

like so many others that have been distinguished in Anglo-Jewish annals, came to England

from Holland in the eighteenth century. But the family—in Holland it was Goldsmit—

was not an integral part of Dutch Jewry. Only a few decades did it spend in that

country. To Holland it had come from Cassel in Hesse-Nassau, although one branch

had settled in Hamburg. There is however, a tradition in the family of a still earlier

Dutch connexion, for there is a claim to descent from Moses Uri haLevi (1544-1622)

who had come to Emden from Poland, the first recognized Ashkenazi rabbi of Amsterdam,

brought there by the earliest of the ex-Marrano settlers. But there is a far more dis-

tinguished ancestry to which the family more or less lays claim—one however which

the Heralds are not as yet prepared to accept—and that is the princely Hasmonean

family of Judaea and the Maccabee hero-sons of Mattathias the priest. Rabbi Uri

claimed this illustrious ancestry and the Goldsmid family, inheriting the claim, took

as its motto Mi Camocha Baelim Adonai, "who is like unto Thee, O Lord, among the

Gods", the basis of the name of Maccabi if an acrostic is accepted. The descendants

of Rabbi Uri haLevi formed several branches, known severally as Moses, Levi, Letteris,

as well as Goldsmid. Joseph Joachim, the greatest of the violinists of two generations

ago, was descended from one, as was also Professor Harold Joachim, the Oxford phil-

osopher. The name Goldsmid is supposed to be a kinnui or civil name, the equivalent

of Uri. According to Exodus XXXI, 4, Bezalel ben Uri was the goldsmith employed

in the decoration of the Tabernacle.

Benedict Goldschmidt, the ancestor of the English family, was born in 1686, possibly

in Amsterdam, where members of the family were already living. The Goldschmidt

family had, however, lived earlier in Frankfurt on Maine and members bearing that

name who were also Levites as are the members of the English Goldsmid family, were

living there in 15211. On the expulsion of the Jews from Frankfurt in 1614, members

of the Goldschmidt family settled in Hameln and Cassel and became known as the

Hameln-Goldschmidts and the Cassel-Goldschmidts. It is from the latter branch

that the English Goldsmids and those Goldschmidts who returned to Frankfurt are

descended.2Benedict Goldschmidt's father, Wolf Goldsmit of Cassel (1659-1717)

1 Some of them are said to have been workers in gold and jewels and from this is derived the civil

name of Goldsmidt.

2 For the German Goldschmidt family see Genealogische Studien über die alten jüdischen Familien

Hannovers by S. Gronemann (1913) (s.v. Goldschmidt, and Hameln); Stammbuch der Frankfurter

Juden by Alexander Dietz (1907) (s.v. Goldschmidt, and Kassel); Hamburgs deutsche Juden by

M. Grunwald (1904) (s.v. Cassel, Hameln, and Goldschmidt).

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3

who had married in Amsterdam, was President of the Dutch-Israelitish Synagogue

of that city. Other members of the family remained in Cassel, where the family had been

settled from the earlier half of the seventeenth century, to emigrate later. The famous

Goldschmidt family whose sons have attained distinction among half the nations of the

civilized world derives from Salomon Benedict of Cassel who settled in Frankfurt late

in the eighteenth century. I have counted fourteen names among the men of outstanding

merit whose records are given in the standard works of biography, all members of the

Goldschmidt family of Frankfurt and this is by no means exhaustive—statesmen, men

of letters, scientists, bankers, artists and a German diplomatist. In Anglo-Jewry we

have as members of this illustrious branch of the family, through a daughter, the late

Lady Fitzgerald, whose benefactions and wide sympathy are well known to most of you,

and Mr. Frank Goldsmith, sometime member of the House of Commons. Still more

remote and outside the Jewish community are the Knight of Kerry and Lady George

Wellesley. Other English descendants of Salomon Benedict Goldschmidt of Frankfurt

were Mrs. Alice Model, Henri Bischoffsheim, Ellen, Countess of Desart and Sir Max

Bonn. Baroness Moritz de Hirsch, wife of the famous philanthropist was also a

member of the family.

Aaron, the second son of Benedict Goldsmit of Amsterdam, was the founder of

the family in England. He came to this country in 1763 and established himself in

London as a merchant. He soon became influential in the Ashkenazi branch of the

Community and was accepted as one of its heads. He died in 1781, leaving four sons

and four daughters. The elder two sons, Gershom or George and Asher, joined the

father in business as Aaron Goldsmid and Sons. On the death of Aaron the firm com-

bined with that of Abraham Mocatta, originally established in 1684 by an ancestor of

our treasurer, as Mocatta and Goldsmid, bullion merchants. They have been agents

of the Bank of England from its establishment. George Goldsmid had a number of

children and grandchildren—one of the former was the heroine of a pseudo-romance

recorded by Professor Bentwich in the volume of our Transactions1 which has recently

been distributed to members—none of whom however, attained to any distinction.

He is still represented in England in the male line.

The second son Asher was the father of Sir Isaac Lyon Goldsmid of whom I shall

speak later and the ancestor of among others Sir Henry d'Avigdor Goldsmid and Mr.

Leonard Goldsmid-Montefiore, who are also descended from Abraham, the youngest

son of Aaron. Of the four daughters of Aaron, Pearl or Margareta, also known as Goley,

married Magnus Joachim or Joachim Moses. Esther married his brother Elias Joachim

and by him was the ancestress of our Lady Chairman2 this evening, of Lord Swaythling

and his brothers and also of Mr. John Mewburn Levien who is to read a paper to us on

John Braham, a protegé of his forbears, next month. Polly, the third daughter, married

Lyon de Symons and by him is the ancestress of Sir Wyndham Deedes and General Sir

George de Symons Barrow. Sarah the youngest married Daniel Eliasson.

Now to turn to the two younger sons of Aaron Goldsmid—Benjamin and Abraham.

Of the Goldsmid family, one of the most distinguished families in Anglo-Jewish history

and one that, as I have endeavoured to point out, holds a prominent position in the story

of greater Jewry, relatively little has been published—very little apart from ephemeral

obituary notices. Benjamin and Abraham, although never adequately treated, have,

however, received more consideration, with perhaps the exception of a great-nephew

1

Volume XV.

2

The Dowager Lady Swaythling.

4

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to whom I will come later, than any other member of the family. On Benjamin, after

his tragic death in 1808, an especially scurrilous work was produced, probably for black-

mailing purposes, by Henry Lemoine, a hack writer with a number of Jewish acquaint-

ances. His name does not appear in the volume which was published by Levy Alexander,

a Jewish printer and publisher whose pen was as a rule dipped in vitriol and who had

other Jewish victims apart from the Goldsmids. The volume is entitled "Memoirs

of the Life and Commercial Connections, Public and Private, of the late Benjamin

Goldsmid Esq. of R.oehampton". The Gentleman's Magazine1 gave sympathetic accounts

of the careers of the two brothers on two or three occasions. On the other hand William

Cobbett, the spiteful and prejudiced English politician and writer, devoted a good part

of one of his public letters in his Weekly Political Register to a bitter attack on Abraham.2

On the financial activities of the brothers our friend and colleague Mr. Paul Emden

has read informative and interesting papers to us.3 I do not propose to go over the

same ground as that which Mr. Emden has so adequately covered.

Benjamin and Abraham who as young men were in business on the edge of the City

developed their interests widely. They stepped out into the City proper, entered into

competition with the group that had secured the monopoly of arranging government

loans, at the time when this country was involved in the long drawn-out life and death

struggle with the France of Napoleon, and broke that monopoly to the permanent

advantage of the state. The brothers when they died were linked with Sir Francis

Baring, the founder of Baring Brothers, as "the pillars of the City". The almost simul-

taneous death of Baring and Abraham Goldsmid shook the financial structure of this

country to its foundations. On the morning after Abraham Goldsmid's death, when the

Stock Exchange opened, Consols had dropped two and three quarter points overnight.

There was still heavier falls in other Government securities. In the words of John

Francis, the brothers were the "First members of the Stock Exchange who competed

with the bankers for the favours of the Chancellor, and diverted from their purses those

profits which were scarcely a legitímate portion of banking business. The combination

of that interest being thus broken, the bargains for public loans became more open,

there was no confederation to limit and lower the prices; and the Ministry and country

reaped the benefit in improved terms."4

The two brothers were as distinguished in philanthropy as they were in finance.

Benjamin was one of the founders and a generous supporter of the Naval Asylum, the

the precursor of Greenwich Hospital. Other members of the family also supported this

institution generously. And, in the words of John Francis, "The daily papers bore an

almost daily testimony to their munificence. Naturally open handed, the poor of all

creeds found kindly benefactors."5 Among stories current at the time of Abraham

Goldsmid were the following:—

One day Mr. Goldsmid observed his favourite waiter at the City of London Tavern

very melancholy and abstracted. On being pressed, John confessed that he had just been

arrested for a debt of £55, and that he was thinking over the misery of his wife and five children.

Goldsmid instantly drew out his cheque book, and wrote a cheque for £100, the sight of which

gladdened poor John's heart and brought tears into his eyes. On one occasion, after a carriage

1

1802 (II) p. 843, 1808, pp. 373 and 457, 1810 (II) pp. 382-5.

2

3.10.1810, page 513.

3

Trans. J. Hist. Soc, Vol. XIV.

4

"Chronicles and Characters of the Stock Exchange" (1885), pp. 180-1.

5

ibid p. 181.

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5

accident in Somersetshire, Goldsmid was carried to the house of a poor curate and there

attended for a fortnight with unremitting kindness. Six weeks after the millionaire's departure

a letter came from Goldsmid to the curate, saying that, having contracted for a large Govern-

ment loan, he had put down the curate's name for £20,000 omnium. The poor curate,

supposing some great outlay was expected from him for this share in the loan, wrote back

to say that he had not £20,000, or even £20, in the world. By the next post came a letter

enclosing the curate £1,500, the profit on selling out the £20,000 omnium, the premium

having risen since the curate's name had been put down.1

These anecdotes may not have been literally true, but si non e vero e ben trovato.

It is said that after Abraham's death more than £100,000 worth of I.O.U.'s were found

torn to pieces among his papers.

The charitable activities of Benjamin and Abraham Goldsmid did not, however,

extend only to the general community. They were conscious at the same time of their

kinship with and their responsibility to their fellow Jews. At the beginning of the

nineteenth century there was widespread unemployment and consequent poverty and

other undesirable results among the Jews of London. This state of affairs was not only

bad in itself, it was also beginning to attract undesirable attention from outside. A plan

was drawn up for the removal of at least one of the causes of the state of affairs, ignorance

of trades among the Jewish youth. The brothers Goldsmid took the lead and soon

raised a sum of £20,000, about half of which was subscribed by non-Jewish friends,

for the benefit of the Jewish poor. The project of 1795 was never realized. There

were too many difficulties in the way. It was later modified and took the form of the

establishment of the Jews' Hospital, now the Jewish Orphanage. In the direction of

the established Jewish institutions and of course of the community in general they also

took their part. The Mashebat Nephesh or Jewish Bread, Meat and Coal Society,

founded in 1778, included among its earliest presidents three of the brothers Goldsmid

and also a brother-in-law, Daniel Eliasson.

Both brothers also moved in high social circles, being the first among conforming

Jews to do so. The relations between Abraham and the royal Duke of Sussex were

those of genuine friendship. It was under Abraham's escort that the three Royal

princes attended service at the Great Synagogue one Friday evening in 1809. He once

actually entertained at luncheon, informally, King George III and his Queen, who

being in the neighbourhood had visited Abraham's country house at Morden almost

unannounced. Lord Nelson was among their closest friends. He spent his last night

in England in Benjamin's house at Roehampton. After the great admiral's death

Abraham befriended Lady Hamilton, when beset by financial anxieties, and since her

home, Merton Place, had to be sold, another brother Asher bought it.

The brothers were not only pillars of the City but also pillars of the Synagogue.

In his home at Roehampton Benjamin had not only a private synagogue, but in its

grounds he reserved a plot for the rabbi of the Great Synagogue—the equivalent of the

Chief Rabbi of today—on which wheat from which his matzos were made was grown.

Many were the tributes to these two men on the occasion of their tragic deaths.

One in The Times on Benjamin Goldsmid was of somewhat mysterious provenance

It ran in part as follows:—

As a public man, his character and that of his brother . . . have been long stamped for

the most scrupulous integrity; and a stronger confirmation of this fact cannot be given than

1 Walter Thornbury, "Old and New London" Vol. I, p. 485.

6

an anglo-jewish family

in the repeated and unqualified approbation of their conduct in their transactions with

Government by the committee of Finance, as well as by the leading members of both parties

in Parliament. As a private character few persons were more estimable. He was an

affectionate husband, a tender and indulgent father, a sincere and unvarying friend to those

attached to him, a generous host and a kind master, benevolent even to excess, not merely

in his subscriptions to almost every public fund and institution, but equally disposed to

attend to the calls of private solicitation for objects worthy of relief. Such is the real character

of the late Mr. Benjamin Goldsmid.

This was published in the issue of The Times of the 13th April, 1808. Six days

later the Editor expressly disclaimed all responsibility for it, not having, as the announce-

ment said, seen it before publication.

Of Abraham Goldsmid The Gentleman's Magazine wrote:—

A man more truly amiable in all the relations of life never existed. His general philan-

thropy, his ready munificence, his friendly demeanour, his mild and unassuming manners,

have been long known and esteemed, both by the circle of his private friends, and by the

public at large; of whose notice the magnitude of his money concerns, and the multiplicity

of his commercial engagements, attracted as large a portion as ever fell to the lot of any individual

unconnected with the administration of the State. He was the promoter of all charitable

institutions. There are not many men who have ever performed more kind acts in social

life, or more liberal ones in what may be esteemed his public one, than Mr. Abraham Goldsmid;

no one, indeed, of any class or description, ever became tolerably well known to him, without

improving their fortunes, in some degree, by the connexion; so that the list of those whom

gratitude, or the sense of kindness received in one way or other, had bound, or ought to have

bound, to him was almost endless.1

The last paragraph was taken verbatim from The Times.2

Benjamin's family adopted Christianity after his death. From him were descended

Major General Albert Goldsmid, one of the fifteen British officers of Jewish birth who,

according to the Duke of Wellington, served under him at Waterloo. Two of Major

General Goldsmid's brothers also held the King's commission. Major General Sir

Frederick Goldsmid, the explorer and linguist, and his sister, Jessie Sarah, the mother

of Colonel Albert Edward Goldsmid, were grandchildren of Benjamin, Colonel Goldsmid

was through his father also a descendant of Esther Joachim, the second daughter of the

founder of the family in England. Abraham left three sons and four daughters. The

second daughter, Isabel, married her cousin Isaac Lyon, son of her uncle Asher. From

them are descended Sir Henry Goldsmid and his brother, Mr. Leonard Montefiore,

and the Baroness de Goldsmid y da Palmeira and her sisters.

Sir Frederick Goldsmid was a soldier by profession and saw active service in China

and the Crimea. More distinguished was he however, in a non-military capacity as

diplomatist, as telegraph engineer and in frontier delimitation. With a remarkable

gift for the acquisition of languages, he took advantage of his sojourn in the East to learn

Hindustani, Russian, Arabic and Turkish in all of which he was expert. Henry Edward

Goldsmid, the brother-in-law of Sir Frederick and the father of Colonel Albert Edward

stood out for capacity in the long roll of distinguished men who have formed the Indian

Civil Service. He died at the early age of 42, with a promise built on performance

that should have carried him into the front rank of Anglo-Indian civilians. His monu-

ment is to be found in the land reforms that raised the peasantry of his province from

1

Gentleman's Magazine, Vol. 80, pp. 384-5.

2

29 September 1810.

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the state of hopeless destitution into which they were sinking. His services were recog-

nized by the people of India as well as by their Government. His son, Albert Edward,

has been identified as the original of George Eliot's great creation "Daniel Deronda."

Born outside the Jewish Community he learnt only after he had attained manhood of his

Jewish ancestry. He turned to a study of Judaism and at the age of 24 adopted his

ancestral faith. By a coincidence the lady whom he married, a distant kinswoman,

followed a similar course and became a Jewess. Colonel Goldsmid may have been a

Daniel Deronda, but he was still more. He was not satisfied to become a Jew and merge

himself in his new community. He determined to give of the best that was in him to

that community. When Zionism was not yet fashionable he came out as a "Lover of

Zion" and formed and took control of the Choveve Zion in England, the organization for

the settlment of Jews in Palestine. Another Anglo-Jewish organization that he founded

was the Jewish Lads Brigade. He also gave two years of his active life to the placing

on firm foundations the Ica Jewish settlements in Argentina.

We will now return to the descendants of Asher, Aaron's second son. He had four

sons and two daughters, of whom Isaac Lyon was the eldest. It was Isaac Lyon Golds-

mid who restored the fortunes of the family which had been so adversely affected by

the deaths of his uncles Benjamin and Abraham. Already some years before those

calamities he had at the age of 22 become a partner in the family firm of Mocatta and

Goldsmid which carried with it membership of the Stock Exchange. He however, soon

branched out into other activities in the City. Long before George Stephenson, he was

a pioneer in railway development, taking part in the financing of the Croydon and

Merstham Railway, afterwards absorbed into the South Eastern system. He was also

among the earliest supporters of the undertakings that led to the building of the London

Docks. Similarly he was Chairman and principal promoter of the Birkenhead Docks.

He is best known in this sphere however, for his work for the development of Hove,

of which he may be said to have been the creator.

Goldsmid's activities in the City by no means monopolized his working day. As a

Goldsmid he was one of the natural leaders of Anglo-Jewry and of his duty in this

respect he was always fully conscious. In him as in so many of the leading Jews of

England of his generation the sense of noblesse oblige was strong. As a matter of course he

took his place in all movements for the welfare of Jewry in this country and abroad.

Within the Community he was especially interested not only in the securing for its

members full equality of opportunity with their Christian fellow citizens, but also the

bringing of the synagogue services more into line with modern needs. As early as the

year 1824 he presided over a committee appointed by the Great Synagogue to make

recommendations for the training of Jewish ministers and Chazanim. The warnings

that this committee gave passed for the most part unheeded. They led to the Reform

Movement in Anglo-Jewry which culminated in the opening of the V/est London

Synagogue eighteen years later, of which members of the Goldsmid family have always

been among the most prominent members.

Another direction in which Goldsmid served Anglo-Jewry truly and well was in the

struggle for the full emancipation of British Jewish citizens. The story of Isaac Lyon's

efforts to this end and those of his son Francis has been told to this Society in part by a

predecessor in this chair, Sir Lionel Abrahams.1 Apart from this the present occasion

is not the one for recording in detail the vicissitudes of the struggle and its final success.

1 Trans. of the Jew. Hist. Soc, Vol. IV.

8

an anglo-jewish family

It is sufficient for my present purpose to emphasize that Isaac Lyon Goldsmid was not

only outstanding in his generation in the Jewish community and, as I shall show shortly

a British citizen of the front rank, but also that he realized the possibility of being both

simultaneously, and never found any incompatibility between his Jewish and his British

responsibilities or any difficulty in reconciling one with the other. As both a Jew and

an Englishman he worked steadfastly for the removal of all disabilities based on religious

discrimination.

Goldsmid’s work for Jewish emancipation was only a part of his general liberal

outlook. A liberalism, deriving ultimately from the teachings of Judaism has always

inevitably been widespread among conscious Jews. Among the liberal movements—

liberal in the wider, not the narrow political sense—of the earlier half of the nineteenth

century there was probably none with which he was not sympathetic, not many to which

he did not devote time and thought. The opening wide of the gates of higher education

to nonconformists was perhaps a Jewish as well as a wider interest. University College,

London, was the entrance through which the pioneers passed. Among the founders

of this institution Isaac Lyon Goldsmid stands out prominent. Even before the establish-

ment of the College was decided on, in conjunction with two other philanthropists, he

bought the site in Gower Street, that on which we are standing, so that the opportunity

of building their college there should not be lost. Nine years later he was similarly

energetic in the establishment of University College Hospital, until today one of the

favourite children of the Goldsmid family. Another educational institution that he

helped to found was the London Institution, now merged in the School of Oriental and

African Studies. In fact he took a lively interest in all progressive movements, cooperat-

ing closely with philanthropists, such as Clarkson, Wilberforce, Zachary Macaulay and

Elizabeth Fry, in the emancipation of the slaves—Britain being the first of the Powers

to adopt that humanitarian policy—in prison and penal reform, in the abolition of capital

punishment for offences short of homicide—in connexion with which he used to spend

days and nights in prison comforting the condemned—and in the social reform move-

ments of Robert Owen, one of the earliest of the modern socialists. And on a lower

plane in the words of The Banker, written after his death and long after his retirement

on account of failing health “At any board or committee Goldsmid’s voice was always

to be heard in behalf of any humane or kindly proposition, whether for affording relief,

or increasing the salary of some old servant with a large family; and when sometimes

he was defeated at the moment in his endeavours, he would seek other means of his

effecting his ends.”1

Sir Francis Goldsmid,2 the elder surviving son—a baronetcy was conferred on

Isaac Lyon in 1841, he being the first member of the Jewish Community to receive

such an honour—inherited not only a fortune and a baronetcy but also an inspiration

from his father. In the struggle for Jewish emancipation and for reform in the synagogue

they worked closely together. In the gaining of emancipation he was to some extent

a pioneer, being the first professing Jew to be called to the Bar (in 1833) and the first to

become a Queen’s Counsel (in 1858). He was elected to Parliament as a Liberal in 1860

and remained a member until his death eighteen years later. In the House of Commons,

he, like most of the earlier Jewish members, could be best described as a Conservative-

Liberal or as a Liberal-Conservative, the ancestors perhaps of the Progressive

1

The Banker XX, p. 222.

2

A biography, “Memoir of Sir Francis Henry Goldsmid, Bart., Q.C., M.P.” was published in

1879 and a second and enlarged edition in 1882.

an anglo-jewish family

9

Conservatives of today. In the House of Commons also, while watching over the interests

of his constituents, he in common with Sir David Salomons and some years later other

Jewish members on both sides—in particular Sir John Simon and Baron Henry de

Worms (later Lord Pirbright)—constituted themselves the representatives of Jewry.

As such they were accepted by their fellow-members and Jewish interests were always

safe in their hands. Sir Francis’ political interests lay especially in the field of foreign

affairs. He showed his sympathy with the people of Poland in their sufferings at the

hands of their Russian masters and urged that under the terms of the Treaty of Vienna

Britain had the right to intervene on their behalf. He urged also that pressure should

be brought to restrain Prussia and Austria in 1864 from attacking Denmark and did not

hesitate to criticize his own government—a Liberal one—for refraining from doing

so. The appeals of the Jews of Rumania against persecution by their Government

obtained his powerful support in the House of Commons and it was largely due to him

that the Jewish case put forward by the Anglo-Jewish Rumanian Committee, of which

he was Chairman, was energetically supported by the British Government. Sir Francis

Goldsmid was from its formation a member of the Executive Committee of the Alliance

Israélite Universelle and was in a sense its representative in England. He was also one

of the principal founders of the Anglo-Jewish Association.

In other respects he accepted the inheritance of his father both within and without

Jewry. University College and University College Hospital were always close to him.

Of both he was the Treasurer and the Goldsmid Ward in the Hospital was named in his

memory in recognition of his services. Of the College he was also President of the

Senate. Of the Jews’ Infant School—a Goldsmid foundation—he was the first president.

He was also among the founders of the West London Synagogue. Long before its

establishment he had, although a layman, given regular sermons in English in the Hay-

market—now the Western—Synagogue in the unrealized hope that the practice would

soon become a permanent one. He helped to guide the West London Synagogue during

its perilous early days and on the death of Daniel Mocatta became Chairman of its

Council of Founders. Sir Francis’ services to England and to Jewry were well summ-

arized in an obituary in The Jewish Chronicle on the occasion of his death.

Sir Francis Goldsmid . . . succeeded in striking an even balance between his duties to

his country, as Member of Parliament and active supporter of various educational and charitable

institutions, and his duties to the religious community of which he was so distinguished a

member. He was essentially an English Jew. Without neglecting any political or social

call, he found time to preside over Jewish charities, to assist in introducing considerable

improvements into English synagogal service; and by his own strict adherence to all Mosaic

rites and ceremonies, he has shown how completely reconcileable are the observances of

Judaism with the obligations of an Englishman.1

Frederick David Goldsmid, Sir Francis’ younger brother, was also a Liberal member

of parliament. He shared his leisure between the work of Jewish and general public

institutions, in particular the Metropolitan Association for Improving the Dwellings

of the Labouring Classes, the Jews’ Hospital, founded by his grandfathers, Asher and

Abraham, of which he was President, and the other Goldsmid institutions, the West

Metropolitan Jewish School, University College and University College Hospital.

He predeceased his brother who was succeeded in the baronetcy by Frederick’s only

surviving son, Julian.

1 Jewish Chronicle, 10 May, 1878.

10

an anglo-jewish family

Sir Julian was essentially a House of Commons man. He was a member for thirty

years, a perfect and most successful Chairman of Committees and was nominated by

The Times as a possible Speaker if his health had not broken down. He was made a

privy councillor for his services a few weeks before his death. To the traditional Golds-

mid institutions, University College and the Hospital, he gave sterling service. Of

University College he was for a time Treasurer and he was Vice Chancellor of the

University itself until his death. In the Jewish Community he was President of the two

Goldsmid educational institutions, the Jews Infant’ School and the West Metropolitan

Jewish School, and was a member of the Committee of the Jews’ Free School. He was

born as it were into a leading part in the management of the West London Synagogue

and occupied in turn all its lay offices. It was largely through his instrumentality that

the breach between Orthodox and Reform Jewry that had persisted since 1840 was

healed. As a founder of the Russo-Jewish Committee, a non-sectarian organization

formed to watch over the interests of the Jews of Russia suffering at the hands of their

rulers, he became chairman in succession to the Lord Mayor, Sir Whittaker Ellis. As

chairman of this body and for his other interests he was recognized in the House of

Commons as spokeman for Anglo-Jewry. Sir Julian left no son. His eldest daughter,

Mrs. Sidney Hoffnung, after his death took the name of Goldsmid and was accorded

the Portuguese title conferred on her great-grandfather, Sir Isaac Lyon, of Baroness

de Goldsmid y da Palmeira. The Goldsmid estates had, however, been entailed in the

event of the failure of a male heir on the descendants of the daughters of Sir Isaac Lyon.

Of these the head of the senior branch was Osmond d’Avigdor, the grandson of Rachel

Goldsmid and Count Henri d’Avigdor, subsequently created by Napoleon III, Duke

d’Acquaviva. Osmond d’Avigdor took the name of Goldsmid and was later created

a baronet in recognition of his public services and also perhaps of his distinguished

family, as Sir Osmond d’Avigdor-Goldsmid.

Sir Osmond d’Avigdor-Goldsmid, familiar to many of us, carried on the tradition

of his family, devoting practically the whole of his life to public service, one half to that

of the state, the other to that of the Jewish Community. His father, Elim d’Avigdor,

was with Colonel Albert Goldsmid one of the founders of the Choveve Zion in England.

It was meet therefore that Sir Osmond should take the leading part, when the opportun-

ity came, among the socalled non-Zionist directors of the Jewish Agency for Palestine.

From the beginning of his public career he was a member of the Council of the Anglo-

Jewish Association. In course of time he became its President in succession to his

kinsman, Claude Goldsmid-Montefiore. From the Presidency of the Anglo-Jewish

Association he passed to that of the Board of Deputies in 1933 and a year later he became

President also of the I.C.A. Outside of the Jewish Community he gave many years of

service in the country’s armed forces, being twice mentioned in despatches in the course

of the first Great War, and in a civil capacity he devoted himself to the public interest

in Kent where his country home lay.

I have now concluded my brief sketch of the activities of the Goldsmid family

in England. As I said in my opening sentences, in doing so I selected in a sense a

typical Anglo-Jewish family, typical that is among the leading, the governing families of

Anglo-Jewry, under whose guidance Anglo-Jewry rose to the pinnacle of its fortunes.

The hundred and fifty years of the Goldsmid dynasty coincided with the golden period

of Anglo-Jewish history. The reason for this coincidence, at any rate the moral of my

story, can be drawn from the narrative I have given.

Olga Marie Estelle Sir Osmond Elsa Sylvie Beryl

Rachel (1872-1949) d’Avigdor (1881-1948) (b. 1879) (Berenice)

(b. 1871) m.1897 Goldsmid m. 1905 Henry m. 1901 (1884-1941)

m. 1901 George Emanuel (1877-1940) F. Goldschmidt Charles

Frank Nathan, O.B.E. m. 1907 Alice da. (d. 1946) Blackston

Fletcher (1869-1936) of Joseph Landau Clapcott

son of Jonah

Nathan

Sir Henry Joseph Cynthia Odette James Arthur,

d’ Avigdor Goldsmid, (1910-5) M.C.

Bart., D.S.O., M.C. (b. 1912)

(b. 1909)

m. 1940

Rosemary Margaret

da, of C. R. I. Nicholl

Sarah Venetia Rosemary Chloe

(b. 1942) (b. 1945)

Published on The Jewish Historical Society of England (http://www.jhse.org)