Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/147

 American Medical Association at their fifty-ninth annual session. In 1907-8 he was president of the Neurological Society, and on its amalgamation with the Royal Society of Medicine he became the first president of the corresponding section, and died in office. For ten years he was hon. secretary to the Association for the Advancement of Medicine by Research.

He died from sudden cardiac failure, on 5 Dec. 1908, at his residence in Wimpole Street. He married on 7 Feb. 1882 Blanche Adine daughter of Dr. Thomas Robinson Loulain, who with a son and daughter survive him. He was buried at Hampstead cemetery.

An enlarged photograph hangs in the committee-room of the medical board of the National Hospital, Queen Square, Bloomsbury.

Becvor ranks amongst the great authorities on the anatomy and diseases of the nervous system. He possessed great intellectual power, energy and industry, and was unsurpassed in accuracy of observation. As a recorder of facts he was conscientious and precise. Yet he was so imbued with scientific caution, that he often hesitated to publish his own observations when they seemed at variance with tradition and accepted teaching.

 BEIT, ALFRED (1853–1906), financier and benefactor, born at Hamburg on 15 Feb. 1853, was eldest son of Siegfried and Laura Beit. The father was a merchant belonging to a well-known Hamburg family, Jewish by race, Lutheran by religion. 'I was one of the poor Beits of Hamburg,' the son once said, implying that another branch was better off than his own. Beit was educated privately, and at seventeen entered the Hamburg office of a firm of South African merchants, D. Lippert & Co., his kinsmen. With a view to qualifying to act as a representative of the branch of this firm, just extended from Port Elizabeth to Kimberley at the diamond mining centre in Griqualand West, Cape Colony, Beit spent 1874 at Amsterdam, where he obtained a knowledge of the diamond trade at first hand. Early in September 1875 he sailed for Cape Town, and proceeding to Kimberley by waggon was one of Lippert's representatives there until 1878, when he revisited Hamburg. His Amsterdam training enabled him to see that Cape diamonds, so far from deserving their current repute of being an inferior product, were generally as good as any in the world, and were being sold in Africa at a price far below their worth in Europe. Accordingly borrowing 2000l. from his father by way of capital, he returned to Kimberley in the same year, and set up under his own name as a diamond merchant. Foreseeing the growth of Kimberley, he is said to have invested most of his capital in purchasing ground on which he put up a number of corrugated iron offices. For twelve of these the rent ultimately received by him was estimated at 1800l. a month, and later he is believed to have sold the ground for 260,000l.

In 1882 he became associated in the diamond business at Kimberley with J. Porges and Julius Wernher. The latter, who was created a baronet in 1905, was a young Hessian who, having fought in the Franco-German war, had come out to South Africa as a qualified architect and surveyor. In 1884 Porges and Wernher returned to England and constituted the London firm of J. Porges & Co. dealing in diamonds and diamond shares, and after 1888 in gold mines as well. Beit was sole representative of this firm at Kimberley until July 1888, when he made London his headquarters, although his subsequent visits to Africa were frequent. On 1 Jan. 1890 the firm of Wernher, Beit & Co. replaced J. Porges & Co., in the same line of business.

When settled at Kimberley, Beit made the acquaintance of Cecil John Rhodes [q. v. Suppl. II], and while close business relations followed he felt the full force of Rhodes's personality. Yielding to its fascination, he became his intimate friend, accepting his ideas and aspirations with enthusiasm. He soon joined Rhodes on the board of the original De Beers Diamond Company (founded in 1880) and played an important part in Rhodes's great scheme of the amalgamation of the chief diamond mines of Kimberley as De Beers Consolidated Mines. The scheme took effect in 1888 after Beit had advanced to Rhodes without security a sum of 250,000l. Under Rhodes's influence, Beit, who had become a naturalised British subject, thoroughly assimilated, despite his foreign birth, the patriotic spirit of British imperialism, and was in politics as all else a strenuous supporter of Rhodes. His association with Rhodes became the chief interest of his life. The two men rendered each other the best kind of mutual assistance. Without Beit, Rhodes was puzzled, or at least wearied, with the details of business. Without Rhodes, Beit might have 