SAMUEL, WILFRED SAMPSON

SAMUEL, WILFRED SAMPSON (1886–1958), British businessman and historian. Born in London, the son of a steel pen manufacturer who died soon after his birth, Samuel was educated in Belgium and Germany. In 1904, with several of his cousins who had been piano manufacturers, he founded the Decca gramophone and record company in London. Samuel served as an officer in World War i. He and his cousins developed Decca into one of the largest recording companies in the world. He then engaged in research on the history of the Sephardi community in London, which resulted in his The FirstLondon Synagogue of the Resettlement (1924), placing the story of the beginnings of the London community on a new basis. He subsequently published many papers on the period, and on the history of the Jews in the West Indies, mainly in the Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England. With Cecil *Roth he founded the Jewish Museum in London in 1932, of which he was chairman until his death. His cousin frank samuel (1889–1954), the son of a piano manufacturer, was educated at Clifton and was also one of the founders of Decca. In 1928 he sold his interest in the company at the peak of the boom and, a few years later, became managing director of the United Africa Company, a commodity trading subsidiary of Unilever. Although generally very successful in this venture, he is best remembered for the ill-considered Tanganyika "groundnuts scheme" of 1946–51. Samuel was, nevertheless, a leading figure in the economic development of east Africa. Wilfred's son edgar samuel (1929– ), who was educated at Clifton and London University, is one of the best-known historians of the early modern period of Jewish, especially Sephardi, settlement in England. He served as director of the Jewish Museum in 1993–95 and was president of the Jewish Historical Society of England in 1988–90. Many of his essays were collected in his At the Ends of the Earth: Essays on the History of the Jews in England and Portugal (2004).

bibliography:

C. Roth, in: jhset, 19 (1960), 210–3. ADD. BIBLIOGRAPHY: Frank Samuel in odnb online; dbb, 5, 37–43; E. Samuel, "Decca Days: The Career of Wilfred Sampson Samuel (1886–1958)," in idem, At the Ends of the Earth (2004), 385–426.

[Cecil Roth /

William D. Rubinstein (2^nd ed.)]