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Sydney Montagu Samuel

Sydney Montagu Samuel (21 June 1848 – 21 June 1884) was an English journalist, librettist, financier, and communal worker.

Sydney Montagu Samuel
Born(1848-06-21)21 June 1848
East London, United Kingdom
Died21 June 1882(1882-06-21) (aged 34)
Fulham, Middlesex, United Kingdom
Alma materUniversity College, London

Biography

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Samuel was born in East London to Jewish parents Eliza (c. 1828–1895) and Moss S. Samuel (c. 1820–1877), a Birmingham-born jeweller and cigar dealer.[1] His maternal uncle was Samuel Montagu, 1st Baron Swaythling, and he was a first cousin of Louis, Henrietta, Lily, and Edwin Montagu, and of Stuart and Herbert Samuel.[2]

Samuel was a broker of the city of London, and was engaged in the banking establishment of his relatives, Samuel Montagu & Co. He contributed poetry and articles on financial matters to the Examiner and other publications, and wrote for the Times an annual financial survey.[3]

He became honorary secretary to the Jewish Board of Guardians in 1878, and wrote its annual reports from 1878 to 1882. He held a similar office in the Jewish Association for the Diffusion of Religious Knowledge, and assisted in establishing the Jewish Working Men's Club. He and Israel Davis jointly purchased the Jewish Chronicle from the Anglo-Jewish Association, to which it had been left by Abraham Benisch on his death in 1878,[4][5] and appointed as editor Asher Myers.[6] In 1879 he travelled to the Holy Land, Egypt, and elsewhere in the Near East, where he investigated the condition of the local Jewish communities. The result was embodied in his Jewish Life in the East (1881).[3]

As a playwright, Samuel wrote the English libretto of Victorien Sardou's Piccolino, produced in 1879 at Her Majesty's Theatre, London, by the Carl Rosa Opera Company,[7] and at the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin.[8] In collaboration with James Donzel, he translated Victor Hugo's La lyre et la harpe into English verse for a cantata by Camille Saint-Saëns, produced at the Birmingham Musical Festival in 1879.[9] A comedietta by him and Henrietta Cowen entitled A Quiet Pipe was produced at the Folly Theatre in 1880.[10] The play involved in its plot "the repugnance of a bride to her husband's pipe, the deceit which became necessary for him to secure his smoke, and the consequent misunderstandings and explanations."[11] He also worked with William Black to dramatise the latter's novel Sunrise, under the title Nathalushka.[12]

Overwork took a toll on his health, and he was admitted to the Munster House Lunatic Asylum in Fulham, Middlesex, on 17 November 1882.[13] He died there in 1884, on his 34th birthday.[14]

Bibliography

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  • Hugo, Victor (1879). La lyre et la harpe [The Lyre and the Harp]. Translated by Samuel, Sydney M.; Donzel, James. Paris: Durand, Schoenewek & Cie. Music by Camille Saint-Saëns.
  • Sardou, Victorien; Nuitter, Charles-Louis-Étienne (1879). Piccolino. Translated by Samuel, Sydney M.
  • Samuel, Sydney M.; Cowen, Henrietta (1880). A Quiet Pipe: An Original Domestic Scene. London: P. Vallentine.
  • Samuel, Sydney M. (1881). Jewish Life in the East. London: C. K. Paul & Co.

References

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  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Jacobs, Joseph; Lipkind, Goodman (1905). "Samuel, Sydney Montagu". In Singer, Isidore; et al. (eds.). The Jewish Encyclopedia. Vol. 11. New York: Funk & Wagnalls. p. 28.

  1. ^ Rubinstein, William D.; Jolles, Michael A.; Rubinstein, Hillary L., eds. (2011). "Samuel, Sydney Montagu". The Palgrave Dictionary of Anglo-Jewish History. London: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 857. ISBN 978-0-230-30466-6. OCLC 793104984.
  2. ^ Berenbaum, Michael; Skolnik, Fred, eds. (2007). "Samuel, Sydney Montagu". Encyclopaedia Judaica. Vol. 17 (2nd ed.). Detroit: Macmillan Reference. p. 767. ISBN 978-0-02-866097-4. Gale CX2587517425.
  3. ^ a b   Jacobs, Joseph; Lipkind, Goodman (1905). "Samuel, Sydney Montagu". In Singer, Isidore; et al. (eds.). The Jewish Encyclopedia. Vol. 11. New York: Funk & Wagnalls. p. 28.
  4. ^ Shaftesley, John M., ed. (1966). Remember the Days: Essays on Anglo-Jewish History Presented to Cecil Roth by Members of the Council of the Jewish Historical Society of England. London: Jewish Historical Society of England. p. 230.
  5. ^ Finklestone, Joseph (November 1991). "The Jewish Chronicle at 150: The World's Oldest Ongoing Jewish Newspaper". Kesher (10): 19e. ISSN 0792-0113. JSTOR 23908272.
  6. ^ Cesarani, David (1994). The Jewish Chronicle and Anglo-Jewry, 1841–1991. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 67. ISBN 978-0-521-43434-8.
  7. ^ Hart, Jerome A. (1913). Sardou and the Sardou Plays. Philadelphia and London: J. B. Lippincott Company. p. 53.
  8. ^ "M. Guirard's 'Piccolino'". The Athenæum (2675). London: 161. 1 February 1879.
  9. ^ Lunn, Henry C. (1 October 1879). "The Birmingham and Hereford Musical Festival". The Musical Times and Singing Class Circular. 20 (440): 526. doi:10.2307/3356778. JSTOR 3356778.
  10. ^ Scott, Clement, ed. (1 April 1880). "Our Play-Box". The Theatre: A Monthly Review of the Drama, Music, and the Fine Arts. 1. London: Charles Dickens & Evans: 244.
  11. ^ Rideing, William H., ed. (1880–1881). "March 1880". Dramatic Notes: An Illustrated Year-Book of the London Stage. 2. London: David Bogue: 17.
  12. ^ Brett, Edwin J. (3 May 1881). "Our Critic at the Play". Something to Read. 1 (8). London: Charles Dickens & Evans: 126.
  13. ^ "Metropolitan Licensed Houses" (January 1876 to December 1885). Lunacy Patients Admission Registers, ID: MH 94 (5), p. 36956. Kew, Surrey: The National Archives.
  14. ^ "Wills and Administrations" (1884). Calendar of the Grants of Probate and Letters of Administration made in the Probate Registries of the High Court of Justice in England, p. 332. London: Principal Probate Registry.
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