The deeth of Baron Grant, which took place at his
house at Bognor on Tuesday, recalls attention to one of the earliest of company-promoters. He was a Jew named Gott- heimer, born in 1830 in Dublin of poor parents, and early displayed the characteristics which marked him through life, a capacity for speculating on a large scale, singular brain-power, which he displayed conspicuously in his defence of himself before Lord Coleridge in 1876, and a craving for social position which was like a mania. He united, indeed, the Jew's desire to be recognised as an equal with the Irish. man's desire to make a social splash. Having won a Baron's title from the King of Italy by real services to Milan, where he built the Galleria Reale, he settled in England as a financier, promoted all manner of schemes, entered Parlia- ment for Kidderminster, bought Leicester Square and gave it to London, built a palace for himself in Kensing- ton, and was supposed in 1868-76 to be on the road to become a multi-millionaire. He had undoubtedly the command of large sums of money, but it may be doubted if he ever was really rich, even to the extent of the half-million which he said, in one of his endless "defences," that he once possessed. English society therefore looked shyly at him, he lost public confidence by doubtful dealings, his innumerable schemes generally failed, and he is supposed to have died a bankrupt, and possibly, though not certainly, very poor. Those who suffered by him thought him an anmitigated scoundrel, bat he was probably only a conscienceless man who thought speculation a game of whist, in which naturally the loser paid, and in which it was for opponents to find out whether you were revoking or not.
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