Alexander, L[evy]. Memoirs of the Life and Commercial Connections, Public and Private, of the Late Benj. Goldsmid, Esq. of Roehampton; Containing a Cursory View of the Jewish Society and Manners

(ANGLO-JUDAICA)

Printed by the Author

London

1808

FIRST EDITION. Engraved frontispiece of Mrs. Benj[ami]n Goldsmid (Rubens 1494). The Alfred Rubens Copy, with his book-plate

Roth, Magna Bibliotheca Anglo-Judaica, p. 127

Benjamin Goldsmid (1755-1808), a prominent financier in the City of London during the French revolutionary wars, was also an officer of the Great Synagogue and a founder of the Jews' Hospital. He was a close friend of the sons of King George III and of Lord Nelson. However a severe fall from his financial heights resulted in Goldsmid committing suicide, hanging himself by a silk chord in his bedroom. The Coroner ruled that "the manner of his death proceeded from the infirmity of his mental faculty" (p.133). (Nonetheless, see next Lot). The author of this biography, Levy Alexander (son of Alexander Alexander, translator of the Hebrew liturgy into English), digresses to make several unsalutary remarks concerning Chief Rabbi Solomon Hirschell (pp.133-134). The public quarrel between the two men, which first erupted in 1802 (the year of Hirschell's appointment), would continue for several years. See H.A. Simons, Forty Years a Chief Rabbi: The Life and Times of Solomon Hirschell (1980), pp.80-82