Edgar Israel Cohen

Edgar Israel Cohen (1853-1933) was a sponge and cigar merchant working in London, England, who later became involved with retail, entertainment, and popularised the motorised London taxicab in 1906. He became associated with the flotation of several family owned businesses of the period including Harrods departmental store. He was a close friend of Lillie Langtry and provided funding for her theatrical ventures in 1900.

Cohen was born in Whitechapel, London in 1853, the son of Israel and Rachael Cohen. His father was a dealer in sponges, as was his grandfather, who came to England from the Netherlands. Cohen was the eldest son from a large family with fifteen siblings. He was known as Emmanuel when young, but later used the first name Edgar. He became a sponge merchant working for I & M Cohen, a business owned by his father and his uncle, Moss Cohen. Edgar remained with the business as a director after both the senior partners died in 1894. In 1903 the firm was amalgamated with Cresswell Brothers and Schmitz, Henry Marks & Sons, becoming the public company, International Sponge Importers Limited.

In the 1880s, Edgar Cohen had a chance meeting and conversation with a gentleman during a journey in London. They exchanged cards and later met and discussed business. The gentleman was Charles Digby Harrod who owned a small shop in Brompton Road. After a fire in his shop and the subsequent rebuild, Cohen suggested to him that he could sell the business via a stock market floatation. This was agreed and in 1889 a prospectus was published indicating that Mr C. D. Harrod was leaving the business on health grounds and a limited company was being formed to buy his holdings for £100,000. Cohen joined the board of the new company (Harrod’s Stores, Limited) and received a large remuneration from Charles Harrod in gratitude. He remained on the board for many years, becoming a director of Harrods Buenos Aires when it was created in 1914, and involved with the takeover of Dickins & Jones in 1914 and Swan & Edgar in 1920.

Cohen was a director of several other companies in the retail and clothing sector including D. H. Evans. He was chairman of the departmental store Crisp & Co. Ltd., in Seven Sisters and the milliners, Louise & Co. His two sons-in-law, American, Leopold D Ginsburg and milliner Frank Reginald Brighten, were involved in the development of this company. In 1903 Maison Lewis of Paris was purchased and in 1910 the French milliner Maison Virot was absorbed into the business. For his part in these negotiations, the shareholders voted Cohen a 3000 guineas bonus and appointed him chairman for life.

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