Sir Edgar Speyer, 1st Baronet (7 September 1862 – 16 February 1932) was an American-born financier and philanthropist.Barker 2004. He became a British subject in 1892 and was chairman of Speyer Brothers, the British branch of the Speyer family's international finance house, and a partner in the German and American branches. He was chairman of the Underground Electric Railways Company of London (UERL, a forerunner of the London Underground) from 1906 to 1915, a period during which the company opened three underground railway lines, electrified a fourth and took over two more.
Speyer was a supporter of the musical arts and a friend of several leading composers, including Edward Elgar, Richard Strauss and Claude Debussy. He was chairman of the Classical Music Society for ten years, and he largely funded the Promenade Concerts between 1902 and 1914. His non-musical charitable activities included being honorary treasurer of the fund for Captain Scott's Antarctic expedition. For his philanthropy he was made a baronet in 1906 and a Privy Counsellor in 1909.
After the start of the World War I, he became the subject of anti-German attacks in the Press. In 1915, Speyer offered to resign from the Privy Council and to relinquish his baronetcy, but the Prime Minister turned down the offer. He resigned as chairman of the UERL and went to the United States.
In 1921, the British government investigated accusations that Speyer had traded with the enemy during the war, and had participated in other wartime conduct incompatible with his status as a British subject. Speyer denied the charges, but his naturalisation was revoked and he was struck off the list of members of the Privy Council.
Life to 1914
Family Speyer was born on 7 September 1862 in New York City, the second son of German Jewish parents, Gustav Speyer and Sophia Speyer (née Rubino) from Frankfurt. His father was an international banker with businesses in Frankfurt, New York and London. Speyer was educated at the Realgymnasium in Frankfurt. On 10 February 1902, in Hamburg, Speyer married the American violinist Leonora von Stosch. They had met at a concert held by Maude Valérie White at which Leonora performed.Adams 2007, p. 231. They had three daughters: Pamela, Leonora, and Vivien.Lentin 2013, p. 53.
Financier In 1884, Speyer became a partner in each of his father's businesses. He headed the Frankfurt office before taking control of the London office, Speyer Brothers, in 1887. His older brother, James, headed the New York company. The firm specialised in arbitrage with Europe and the United States, and the financing of railway projects. On 29 February 1892, Speyer became a naturalised British citizen.
Speyer Brothers' involvement in railway finance brought Speyer into contact with American Charles Yerkes in 1900. In Chicago, Yerkes had led the development of the city's urban transport system, and he went to London to capitalise on the emerging opportunities for new deep-level underground "tube" railways there. He and Speyer headed a consortium of international investors involved in the construction of three of London's underground railways and the electrification of a fourth.
With Yerkes as chairman, the Underground Electric Railways Company of London (UERL) was established in 1902 with a capitalisation of £5 million, the majority of shares sold to overseas investors. Further share issues followed, which, by 1903, raised a total of £18 million (£ today) to be used across all of the UERL's projects. Yerkes died in December 1905, and Speyer took his place as chairman of the UERL. (registration required). By 1907, the three new railways had opened and the electrification works had been completed. Despite the UERL's engineering success in carrying out the works in such a short time, the company was in a difficult financial position. The preliminary estimates of passenger numbers proved to be over optimistic and revenues were not covering operating costs.
After bailing out the company, Speyer, with Managing Director Albert Stanley, struggled for a number of years to restore its finances. This was finally achieved with the purchase of the London General Omnibus Company in 1912, as its profits could be used to offset losses elsewhere in the group. In November 1912, Speyer further consolidated the UERL's control of London's underground railways when he negotiated the purchase of London's two other main tube railways, the City and South London Railway and the Central London Railway.
Philanthropist and patron As head of the London arm of the family businesses, Speyer became wealthy. He owned a pair of neighbouring houses at 44 and 46 Grosvenor Street, Mayfair, that he had rebuilt as a single residence at the cost of £150,000 (equivalent to £ in ). (registration required). The rebuilding work was carried out by Detmar Blow and Fernand Billery in 1910 and 1911; the architects gave the house a "Beaux-Arts" style portland stone façade and lavish interiors including 11 bedrooms and a large music room.Sheppard 1980, pp.44–57.Turner 1904, p. 544. Speyer also had a large country house built in 1908, in the fashionable Edwardian resort of Overstrand on the Norfolk coast.
The house was named "Sea Marge" (meaning land that borders the sea) and was designed in the Mock Tudor style, surrounded by gardens. To decorate his homes, Speyer collected works of art, furniture and decorative items from across Europe. He also commissioned art works, including his wife's portrait, painted by John Singer Sargent in 1907, and his own portrait, painted by William Orpen, which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1914.
Like his cousin Edward Speyer, Edgar was a music lover and patron of the arts, frequently holding concerts in his home. He was friends with composers Edward Elgar, Edvard Grieg, Richard Strauss, Claude Debussy and Percy Grainger, and with the German cellist and composer Hugo Becker. Speyer owned violins by Stradivarius and Giuseppe Guarneri, used by his wife in public and private performances. Following financial problems experienced by Robert Newman, Speyer held the position of chairman of the Queen's Hall Concert board from 1902 to 1914, paying £2,000 per year () to underwrite the Promenade Concerts.
Speyer increased rehearsal time for the Queen's Hall Orchestra and was involved in the challenge to the deputy system then operating, stopping musicians from sending under-prepared substitutes to perform in their places.Langley 2007, p. 5. He was described by Bird as "the sole monetary force which kept the Queen's Hall Orchestra afloat".Bird 1982, p. 133. Speyer's control of the Queen's Hall enabled him to attract musicians and composers to perform modern new works at his concerts including Strauss, whom he brought to London to conduct the first English performance of A Hero's Life, and Arnold Schoenberg, whose Five Orchestral Pieces received its première in 1912.Moore 1984, p. 383.Langley 2007, p. 4. Becker dedicated Three Pieces for Cello with Piano Accompaniment to Speyer in recognition of their friendship, and Strauss dedicated his opera Salome to him.
Speyer also contributed £2,500 to the foundation of Whitechapel Art Gallery where he was a trustee for 15 years.Langley 2007, p. 3. He was chairman of the Nervous Diseases Research Fund, president of Poplar Hospital, and sat on the board of the King Edward's Hospital Fund, to which he donated £25,000 in 1902 (equivalent to £ in ). In December 1904, having read of the loss in a newspaper article, Speyer donated £5,700 to replace all of the funds lost by investors in the failure of a penny savings bank at Needham Market, Suffolk.
From 1909, Speyer was honorary treasurer of the fund raised to finance Robert Falcon Scott's 1910 British Antarctic Expedition to which he donated £1,000 of the £40,000 that was required. Speyer was prepared to take personal responsibility for a share of the liabilities of the expedition, although the money raised from public donations was sufficient.Huxley 1913, pp. 501–502. Mount Speyer in Antarctica is named in his honour. One of Scott's last letters was written to Speyer. It was found when Scott's body was recovered from his last camp after his unsuccessful return from the South Pole.Letter of 16 March 1912, quoted in Turley 1914, p. 424.
On 25 July 1906, Speyer was created a baronet. Politically, Speyer was a Liberal. He was a member of the Reform Club, (registration required). and a friend of H. H. Asquith, by whose recommendation he was made a Privy Counsellor (PC) in 1909. In 1911, he was awarded the Order of the Crown, 2nd class by Kaiser Wilhelm II.Friedenwald 1911, p. 144.
Life after 1914
Anti-German pressure
The end of the 19th century and the first decade of the 20th century saw rising anti-German sentiment in Britain. As the naval arms race between Britain and Germany escalated, distrust of Germans and those of German origin was stirred-up by press warnings of the rising military threat from Germany. This was developed further in popular magazines such as the National Review and in novels such as Erskine Childers' The Riddle of the Sands and invasion novels such as William Le Queux's The Invasion of 1910.
Following the British declaration of war with Germany on 4 August 1914, Speyer resigned as a partner of the Frankfurt branch of the bank. After a Royal Proclamation on 11 September 1914 requiring British subjects to have no links with companies doing business with Germany, Speyer resigned as a partner of the American bank. (registration required). Nonetheless, suspicions regarding Speyer's German parentage led to a hate campaign against him. Crowds gathered outside his home and jeered visitors.
Accusations of his disloyalty and treachery appeared in the Press, and he was accused of signalling to German submarines from his Norfolk house. Lady Speyer was ostracised from societies and associations of which she had formerly been a member. Speyer was asked to resign from the board of the Poplar Hospital due to threats of substantial reductions in donations if he remained. The couple were asked to remove their daughters from school as other parents were threatening to remove their children.Benson 1932, p. 249.
Speyer ignored a call to write one of the "loyalty letters" that Sir Arthur Pinero proposed be provided by prominent naturalised citizens of German origin.Holmes 1991, p. 27. (registration required). Instead, on 17 May 1915, Speyer wrote to Asquith, then Prime Minister, asking him to accept his resignation as a Privy Counsellor and to revoke his baronetcy, stating:
Nothing is harder to bear than a sense of injustice that finds no vent in expression.
For the last nine months I have kept silence and treated with disdain the charges of disloyalty and suggestions of treachery made against me in the Press and elsewhere. But I can keep silence no longer, for these charges and suggestion have now been repeated by public men who have not scrupled to use their position to inflame the overstrained feelings of the people.
I am not a man who can be driven or drummed by threats or abuse into an attitude of justification. But I consider it due to my honour as a loyal British subject and my personal dignity as a man to retire all my public positions.
I therefore write to ask you to accept my resignation as a Privy Councillor and to revoke my baronetcy. (registration required).
He resigned as chairman of the UERL and from the boards of the King Edward's Hospital Fund, the Poplar Hospital and the Whitechapel Art Gallery. (registration required).