Lionel de Rothschild
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The Right Honourable Lionel de Rothschild |
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Member of Parliament for the City of London |
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In office 1869 – 1874 |
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Member of Parliament for the City of London |
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In office 1847 – 1868 |
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| Born | 22 November 1808 London, England |
| Died | 3 June 1879 (aged 70) London, England |
| Resting place | Willesden Jewish Cemetery, Brent, London |
| Political party | Liberal |
| Spouse(s) |
Charlotte von Rothschild (m. 1836) |
| Religion | Jewish |
Baron Lionel Nathan de Rothschild (22 November 1808 – 3 June 1879) was a British banker, politician and philanthropist who was a member of the prominent Rothschild banking family of England. He became the first practising Jew to sit as a Member of Parliament in the United Kingdom.
The son of Nathan Mayer Rothschild and Hanna Barent Cohen, he was a member of the prominent Rothschild family. He was born in London, where his father had founded the British branch of the Europe-wide family.
In his earlier years, he studied at the University of Göttingen, before embarking on an apprenticeship in the family business in London, Paris and Frankfurt. Lionel was admitted to the family partnership in 1836 at a family gathering in Frankfurt.
Like his father, he was a Freiherr (Baron) of the Austrian Empire, but unlike his father he used the title in British society. In 1838, Queen Victoria authorized the use of this Austrian title in the United Kingdom.
Prime Minister Gladstone proposed to Queen Victoria that he be made a British peer. She demurred, saying that titling a Jew would raise antagonism and furthermore it would be unseemly to reward a man whose vast wealth was based on what she called "a species of gambling" rather than legitimate trade. However, in 1885 the Queen did raise Rothschild's son Nathan to the peerage; he became the first Jewish member of the House of Lords.
Rothschild was responsible for raising large sums for the government, especially in the Crimean war, and for philanthropic relief of the victims of the Great Irish Famine. On 1 January 1847, he founded the British Relief Association, alongside Stephen Spring Rice, John Abel Smith and other notable aristocrats. The Association went on to raise £500,000, and was the largest private provider of relief during the Irish Famine and Highland Potato Famine. In 1861, in protest at the suppression of the Polish uprisings, he (initially) refused to contract a loan to Russia. His most famous undertaking was financing the government's purchase of the Suez Canal shares from Egypt for £4 million.
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