Portal:Trains/Selected article/Week 50, 2008

Sir Edgar Speyer, 1st Baronet (7 September 1862 – 16 February 1932) was an American-born financier and philanthropist of German Jewish ancestry. He became a British citizen in 1892 and was chairman of Speyer Brothers, the British branch of his family’s international finance house, and chairman of the Underground Electric Railways Company of London Limited (UERL, forerunner of the London Underground) from 1906 to 1915. He was a supporter of the musical arts and largely funded the Promenade Concerts until 1914. For his philanthropy he was made a baronet in 1906 and a Privy Counsellor in 1909. After the start of the First World War, he became a subject of anti-German attacks in the press. Speyer resigned as chairman of the UERL and went to the United States in 1915. In 1921, following an investigation of accusations that he traded with the enemy during the war and other wartime conduct not compatible with his British citizenship, his naturalisation was revoked by the British government and he was struck off the list of members of the Privy Council.