Barney Barnato
Born in a Whitechapel slum in 1852, Barnett Isaacs didn’t see many options open to him. Toiling in the sweatshops of the East End held little attraction, nor did working in his uncle’s Mile End pub or his father’s shop off Petticoat Lane. Leaving school at 14, he drifted from job to job, working as a pub door bouncer and working up a stage act for the East End music halls.
But what Barnett really wanted was to get rich. So when older brother Harry wrote back from Kimberley, in the Northern Cape of South Africa, telling fantastic tales of the riches he had made, his sibling famously cried out ‘And Barnett too!’ It became a jokey catchphrase between the two, and evolved into Barnett’s nickname, Barney Barnato. Both brothers would eventually call themselves ‘Barnato’.
Harry had gone to the Cape in 1871, working as a comedian and conjuror, but he stumbled into the biggest diamond rush in history. Five years earlier, a single diamon had been found on the banks of the Orange River, near Hopetown. In the year Harry arrived, two Afrikaaner farmers, brothers Diederik Arnoldus De Beers and Johannes Nicholas de Beers fave Dutch diamond prospectors permission to dig their fields for the precious stones. They struck paydirt and so began a stampede for diamonds, with hundreds of small prospectors digging for riches.
Harry was one of them. Barney’s granddaughter, Diane Barnato Walker, takes up the story. “Harry wrote back with these glowing stories that the streets of Kimberley were paved with gold, and the diamonds were there for picking up.” Barney wanted part of it, so his uncle, who kept the King of Prussia public house in the Mile End Road gave him four boxes of bad cigars as capital. But when Barney arrived in Kimberley, he found his brother living in a tent on his claim, with his toes sticking out of his socks.
But the canny Isaacs brothers had a little capital and were able to buy diamonds cheap from prospectors and sell them on for a profit. This they in turn put to buying up rival claims, as unsuccessful diggers gave up just that bit too soon. The little hill of Colesberg Kopje, where the first 83.5 carat diamond had been discovered, was now gone, replaced by the huge ‘Big Hole’ of the Kimberley Mine. Still the brothers consolidated. But just as quickly as they grew the Barnato Diamond Mining Company (subsequently the Kimberley Central Mining Company) rival diamond man Cecil Rhodes was consolidating his De Beers mining company.
A furious battle ensued to buy up shares in Kimberley Central, with the share pricie soaring from £14 to £49 in just a few months. But Rhodes outflanked Barney, laying claim to 60% of the shares in the brothers’ company, and he forced a merger with De Beers. Competition was squashed, the price of diamonds was controlled by Rhodes, and so was born the company that controls the diamond trade to this day. In March 1888 Barney sold out the rest of his share to Rhodes receiving the largest cheque ever written … £5,338,650. £4m went into the pockets of the Barnato brothers.
Barnato and Rhodes had made themselves rich beyond their craziest dreams and both went on to use their wealth and influence to gain political power. A century of more later, De Beers is still in control of the world diamond business.
Barney’s story has a mysterious twist. In 1897, he was on board a ship for England, but he never reached his old home. He reportedly committed suicide by jumping overboard. It was a story fiercely rejected by his family, who argued that it was against the character of this tough wheeler dealer. His body was recovered and buried in the Jewish Cemetery at Willesden.
The Barnato clan
Barney’s son Woolf Barnato (1895-1948) was three times winner of the Le Mans 24 Hours Race, chairman of Bentley Motors and kept wicket for Surrey County Cricket Club. Woolf’s daughter Diana Barnato Walker (1918-2008) spent World War II as an ambulance driver during the Blitz and then took pilot training, delivering several hundred Spitfires, Hurricanes, Tempests, Blenheims, Mosquitos, Mitchells and Wellingtons to active service units. She was the first British women to break the sound barrier, and was made MBE in 1965. In 1947 she gave birth to her only child, a son called Barney Barnato.