Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol I (1901).djvu/192

 sonally he would never accept a privilege which involved the renunciation of his rights as a British subject. He was therefore regarded with some favour by President Kruger, and his persuasions were to some extent responsible for the president's consent to the extension of the Cape railway into the Transvaal; he failed, however, to induce the president to withdraw his support from the Netherlands railway, or to grant municipal government to Johannesburg. He was naturally not initiated into the secret of the Jameson raid of December 1895, which he afterwards denounced in unmeasured terms; but his nephew, Mr. S. B. Joel, was one of the reform committee of Johannesburg, and after the raid Barnato went to Pretoria to plead on the prisoners' behalf; he also threatened to close down all his mines and throw twenty thousand whites and a hundred thousand Kaffirs out of employment unless the prisoners were released. When their release was effected Barnato presented to Mr. Kruger the two marble lions which guard the entrance to what was then the presidency at Pretoria.

Barnato's health began to fail in 1897, and on 14 June he threw himself overboard from the Scot, not far from Madeira, on his way from Cape Town to Southampton; the Cape legislature adjourned on hearing the news; his body was recovered and brought to Southampton, where, on the 18th, a coroner's jury returned a verdict of 'death by drowning while temporarily insane.' Barnato was buried on the 20th by the side of his father in Willesden cemetery; a portrait is prefixed to Raymond's 'Memoir.' He married in 1875 at Kimberley, and his widow, with two sons and one daughter, survived him.

Barnato possessed a wonderful financial aptitude, untiring industry, and a genius for stock exchange speculation. He retained his ignorance through life, read nothing, not even the newspapers, and amused himself with the drama of the lower sort, with prize-fighting, and horse-racing. He was, however, generous, good-natured, and free from snobbery. He did not live to complete the mansion he commenced building in 1895 at the corner of Park Lane and Stanhope Street. The management of his business affairs devolved upon his nephew, Woolf Joel, who was assassinated at Johannesburg in March 1898, and buried in Willesden cemetery on 19 April (see Times, 20 April 1898).



BARNBY, JOSEPH (1838–1896), composer and conductor, son of Thomas Barnby, an organist, was born at York on 12 Aug. 1838. At the age of seven he became a chorister in the minster, as six of his brothers had been before him. He began to teach music at the age of ten, and was an organist and choirmaster at twelve. At sixteen he entered the Royal Academy of Music as a student, and (in 1856) was narrowly defeated by (Sir) Arthur Sullivan [q. v. Suppl.] in the competition for the first Mendelssohn scholarship. After holding the organistship of Mitcham church for a short time Barnby returned to his native city, where for four years he taught music. He then definitely settled in London, where he successively held the following appointments as organist and choirmaster: St. Michael's, Queenhithe (30l per annum); St. James the Less, Westminster; St. Andrew's, Wells Street (1863-71); St. Anne's, Soho (1871-1886). The services at St. Andrew's brought him a great reputation by reason of their high standard of interpretation and the modern character of the music rendered there, especially that of Gounod, with which Barnby was much in sympathy. Mr. Edward Lloyd was a member of the choir. At St. Anne's, Soho, Barnby introduced the less-known Passion music (St. John) by J. S. Bach, which was performed with orchestral accompaniment, then quite a novelty in a parish church.

In 1861 Barnby became musical adviser to Messrs. Novello, which appointment he held till 1876, At the instigation of Messrs. Novello 'Mr. Joseph Barnby's choir' was formed under his conductorship in 1867, the first concert being given at St. James's Hall on 23 May. From 1869 concerts were given under the designation 'Oratorio Concerts,' at which the low pitch {diapason normal) was introduced, and several great works were revived and admirably performed, e.g. Handel's 'Jephtha,' Beethoven's great mass in D, and Bach's 'St. Matthew Passion.' At the end of 1872 the choir was amalgamated with that conducted by M. Gounod, and, as the Royal Albert Hall Choral Society (now Royal Choral Society), began to give concerts on 12 Feb. 1873. For the remaining twenty-three years of his life Barnby conducted this society with conspicuous ability, and proved to be a choral conductor of the highest attainment. Wagner's 'Parsifal,' in a concert-room version, was produced by