the world of private banking

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THE WORLD OF PRIVAtE BANKING
with tuberculosis. Cassel devoted much care to her in her last years. In 1901 she
had married a Conservative MP, Lt Col. Wilfred Ashley, grandson of the great Earl
of Shaftesbury and great-grandson of Lady Palmerston, through whom he had
inherited Broadlands House in Hampshire. After his daughter’s death, Cassel’s
affection centred upon his two grand-daughters, especially the elder, Edwina, later
Countess Mountbatten.
In 1910, partly in response to these tragedies, but perhaps also in anticipation
of war disrupting international finance, Cassel decided to reduce though not to
eliminate the scale of his business activities. Before and after his semi-retirement
he gave away at least £2 million in charitable donations, including £200,000 in
1902 for the founding of the King Edward VII Sanatorium for Consumption at
Midhurst, with a further £20,000 in 1913; £10,000 in 1907 to the Imperial College
of Science and Technology; in 1909 a £46,000 half share with Lord Iveagh for
founding the Radium Institute; £210,000 in 1911 for setting up the King Edward VII
British-German Foundation for the aid of distressed people in Germany; £30,000
for distressed workmen in Swedish mines (some of his earliest financial gains had
been the outcome of investment in the mining, transportation and processing of
Swedish iron ore); £50,000 to Hampshire hospitals in memory of his daughter; in
1913 £10,000 to Egyptian hospitals and £50,000 for the sick and needy of Cologne.
His main contribution to Jewish charity was to devote a considerable amount of
money and effort to Hirsch’s favoured cause of acquiring a national home for
Jews. During the First World War Cassel gave at least £400,000 for medical
services and the relief of servicemen’s families. In 1919 he donated £500,000 for
an educational trust fund which was used to establish a faculty of commerce at the
London School of Economics, to support the Workers’ Educational Association, to
finance scholarships for the technical and commercial education of working men,
to promote the study of foreign languages by the establishment of professorships,
lectureships and scholarships and to support the higher education of women.
He gave £212,000 for founding a hospital for functional nervous disorders at
Penshurst, Kent.
When he died he left £7,551,608 (net personalty £7,329,033) mainly to his
family, with very little bequeathed to charity. 29
Schroders
There is no reason to believe that philanthropy was the preserve of Jewish bankers,
though their charitable activities have been more fully documented than those of
other groups in the City of London. Richard Roberts’s work 30 provides a vivid
glimpse into the philanthropic works of one other important group, the Lutheran,
29
P. Thane, ‘Cassel, Sir Ernest Joseph’, in D.J. Jeremy (ed.), Dictionary of Business
Biography (London, 1984), vol. 1, pp. 604–14.
30
R. Roberts, Schroders: Merchants and Bankers (Basingstoke, 1992).