Millionaire Art Connoisseur's Death In London

Taupo Times, Volume VI, Issue 287, 8 August 1957, Page 3

Millionaire Art Connoisseur's Death In London

A most unusual member of the famous Rothschild banking family died in London recently. He was 78-year-old James ("Jimmy") Rothschild, millionaire art connoisseur, racehorse owner and former Liberal M.P. Jimmy Rothschild was a Rothschild changeling. He liked to gamble with money, not use it in international banking. He preferred to win — or lose — money on horses than to make it on the Stock Exchange. With the Rothschilds, reputed to be still one of the richest families in the world, making money is almost a religion. 1 Tall and stooping, James Rothschild was a familiar figure on all the race tracks. He dressed with care, in superbly cut suits and a shiny silk topper. A monocle wedged in one eye, he liked to stroll about the course, laying bets to the limit with any bookie who would take him on. The monocle coneealed a glass eye. As a young man he lost an eye when a ball struck him during a golf game in Paris. James Rothschild always backed his own horses h.eavily. . So he wor the reputation of being straight, a man whose entries were always out to win. Inherited £2M When he watched races a black cat was often perched on his shoulder. On his lucky days he would gc around the stables distributing £5 notes to the stable boys. In 1925 he entered Reine Lumiere. a filly he had bought for little more than three hundred pounds five days before, in the Grand Prix de Paris. Its starting price was 119 to 1.

Before the race a bookmaker approached Jimmy, offering to pay some money he owed him. Jimmy told him to put it on Reine Lumiere instead and pay the debt out of his winnings — if there were any. The outsider came home. it was her one moment of glory. She never won another race in her whole career on the tracks. James Rothschild — he hated being called "Jimmy" — was the son of Baron Edmond de Rothschild, head of the French branch of the family, "the richest Rothschild of them all." Besides a huge legacy from his father, James Rothschild inherited about £2m sterling from his aunt. Miss Alice de Rothschild, plus the magnificient country residence Waddesdon Manor, Buckinghamshire where he lived with his wife. The Rothschilds, as a family are still powerful, but not so powerfui as in their comparatively palmy days. To-day their resources have been narrowed by wars and political upheavals. But though they have been challenged, |bey have kept their fingers in a number of glittering pies. The fortune which Jimmy Rothschild leaves behind must be worth some millions. And Jimmy was not by nature a financier.