Exhibition - From Bank to Westminster

Lionel de Rothschild's father, Nathan Mayer Rothschild had left his father's developing business in Frankfurt and come to Manchester in 1798 to buy the cloth which was now being manufactured in the area more cheaply than anywhere else in Europe and to send it back to mainland Europe for sale. In 1806 he married Hannah Barent Cohen, the daughter of a wealthy London Jewish merchant, and began to move his business to London. He was now more a banker than a merchant and working increasingly effectively with his other brothers who, by the early 1820s were functioning as an international banking network, with bases in Frankfurt, London, Paris, Vienna and Naples.

Next page »