The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1897-06-15
His Career In south Africa and as a
SpecuIatOr on the stock Ex-
changes of Great Britain.
GREAT FINANCIAL METEOR
WHO MADE MILLIONS IN PROMOTING
AND BOOMING MINING COMPANIES.
First known as the Driver of a Trick
DOnkey-His arities-Barnett
Isaacs His Real Name.

LONDON, June IA (Midnight)-A special
dispatch from Funchal, Island of Madeira,
off the west coast of Morocco, says that on
the arrival there to-day of the British
steamship Scot, which left Table Bay
Cape Town on June 2, for Southampton, it
was announced that Barney Barnato, the
South Africa diamond king" who was
among the passengers, had committed sui
eide by leaping overheard. His body was
recovered.
The Daily Telegraph, which announces
the death of Barnato while a passenger on
the Scot from Cape Town, says on the au-
thority of a news agency that he fell over
board
The late Barney Barnato was in many
respects the most remarkable speculator of
the century. OF all the Englishmen who
have taken part in the development of
South Africa two only have secured
worldwide reputation. These have been
Cecil Rhodes and Barnett Isaacs, more
often and less respectfully styled Barney.
Barnato was an assumed name, for he be-
gan his life in South Africa by exhibiting a
trick donkey some twenty-five years ago.
He was then about twenty years of age.
Barnato was an English Jew and illus
trated in an extraordinary way the finan-
cial genius of his race. Up to the point
where his fortune began to decline he made
money by leaps and bounds, and in 1895,
when his good fortune was at it's zenith,
it was estimated that he controlled inter-
ests worth in the neighborhood of G1U0-
eco 600. 1t was the fashion to call him the
A .
was virtually the king of the London money
market. In the autumn of 1895, when the
boom in Kaffirs, the shares of the COM
paratively new gold mines of the Trans
vaal, South Africa, was at it's height, every
man, woman and child in London with
money to invest invested it in Kaff1rs. The
craze was the last of those financial fevers
which periodically attack conservative
England, the South Sea bubble being the
first. For months it was the controlling
passion in London, and it was scarcely less
rampant in Paris and Berlin. The shares
went to unheard-of figures and fortunes
were made in a day. The center of this
tremendous financial outburst was Barney
Barnato, and he was conservatively esti-
mated at that time as worth between $780,
100000 and $15000O,000. Among his assets
was a bank originally capitalized at $12, ,6OO,-
600. In a very few months it's capital stock
rose in value to S45, 100000.
Barnato was born in London. Little is
known as to his early life except that he
received his instruction from a private tutor
instead of attending the public schools. He
was a younger son, and at the age of twen-
ty went to South Africa then a much more
savage territory than it is now, and scantIy
populated by Englishmen or persons Of
English descent, to seek his fortune. The
Kimberley diamond mines were just begin
ming to be productive With his few pounds
of capital he began dealing in diamonds in
a small way. He was clever and pushing.
Everything he touched he made successful.
In five years he had earned enough in the
retail sale of diamonds to purchase shares
in the mines from which his merchandise
had come. Before another five years had
elapsed his holdings at Kimberly had be-
come very large. and when the Transvaal
gold fields were discovered he had profits
to invest in them.
In 1856 Barnato was definite money pow
er in South Africa, and began to be spoken
of as the rival of Cecil Rhodes. Unlike in
temperament and even more unlike in per-
sonaI ambition, the two men started in to
be hot opponents, but in 1888 they reached
the conclusion simultaneously that their
respective interests could be best promoted
by combining forces, and the De Beers con-
solidated mines were the result one of the
most valuable pieces of property of the kind
in the world.
Barnato repeatedly and persistently de-
MED the story that he began life in South
Africa by exhibiting a trick donkey but
there are many Africanders entirely ia
miliar with his career in that part of the
world who have as persistently and re-
peatedly asserted this to be the fact. There
is no truth, however, in the story that he
was ever a clown or a juggler in a wander
ing show. He used to say that the only
foundation for this report was the fact that
when he first went to South Africa he fire.
quently took part in private theatricals for
the benefit of hospitals and similar chari-
ties He had considerable ability in this
direction, and his favorite roles in later
years were Othello and Matthias in ''The
Bells"
Although Barnato represented Kimberly
twice in the Cape Legislature, he had little
time to give to politics and little interest
in that field of activity. Cecil Rhodes uses
wealth only as means of political control;
Barnato aspired only to such control of men
as comes from being fabulously rich His
record in the Cape Legislature was quite
devoid of incident. When the tremendous
increase in his mining interests called for
the establishment of a London branch this
took the form of the Barnato Bank From
that date he spent most of his time in Lon
don. living at first in Earl Spencers town
residence, but moving finally into a magnih-
cent mansion overlooking Hyde Park While
in Africa he married and had three chill
dren. two sons and a daughter.
He always had, or professed to have.
boundless faith in the future of the Trans
vaal, and his personal popularity among all