Samuel Montagu, 1er baron Swaythling

Origins and early life

Samuel Montagu was born Montagu Samuel in Liverpool on 21 December 1832, the son of Louis Samuel, a Jewish silversmith and watchmaker, and he remained an observant Orthodox Jew all his life, keeping the Sabbath even at the height of his business career.

Work and career

He reversed his names, moved to London, and in 1853 founded the bullion and foreign exchange house Samuel Montagu and Company, which became one of the leading private banks of the City and a central player in the international silver market. He advised governments on currency questions, sat on the royal commission on gold and silver, and argued for decimal coinage in Britain. Elected Liberal member of parliament for Whitechapel in 1885, he held the seat until 1900, representing the East End district where tens of thousands of Jews fleeing the Russian pogroms had settled, and he spent much of his fortune on them: he founded the Federation of Synagogues in 1887 to give the immigrants' small prayer houses a common structure and a voice against the established United Synagogue, and he backed the Jewish Board of Guardians, apprenticeship schemes and the Jewish Working Men's Club.

He travelled to Russia and to Palestine to report on Jewish conditions at first hand. Made a baronet in 1894 and Baron Swaythling in 1907, he was the father of the cabinet minister Edwin Montagu and of Lily Montagu, a founder of British Liberal Judaism. He died in London on 12 January 1911.