Sir Isaac Goldsmid, 1st Baronet - Biography

Sir Isaac Lyon Goldsmid, Baronet (13 January 1778 – 27 April 1859) was a financier and one of the leading figures in the Jewish emancipation in the United Kingdom.

Goldsmid was born in London, and began in business with a firm of bullion brokers to the Bank of England and the East India Company. He amassed a large fortune, and was made Baron da Palmeira by the Portuguese government in 1846 for services rendered in settling a monetary dispute between Portugal and Brazil, but he is chiefly known for his efforts to obtain the emancipation of the Jews in England and for his part in founding University College London. The Jewish Disabilities Bill, first introduced in Parliament by Sir Robert Grant in 1830, owed its final passage through the House of Lords in 1858 to Goldsmid's energetic work. He helped to establish the University College Hospital in 1834, serving as its treasurer for eighteen years, and also aided in the efforts to obtain reform in the English penal code. Moreover he assisted by his capital and his enterprise to build some of the railways in southern England and also the London docks. In 1841 he became the first (unconverted to Christianity) Jewish baronet, the honour being conferred upon him by Lord Melbourne. He had married his cousin Isabel and their second son was Sir Francis Goldsmid, 2nd Baronet (1808-1878). In 1849, Goldsmid bought Somerhill House near Tonbridge, Kent. Oh his death, it passed to his son Frederick.