Charles Rothschild

Charles Rothschild
Charles Rothschild
Born (1877-05-09)9 May 1877
London, England
Died 12 October 1923(1923-10-12) (aged 46)
Nationality English
Occupation Banker, entomologist
Spouse(s)
Children Miriam Rothschild
Elizabeth Charlotte Rothschild
Victor Rothschild
Pannonica Rothschild
Parent(s) Nathan Rothschild, 1st Baron Rothschild
Emma Louise von Rothschild

Nathaniel Charles Rothschild (9 May 1877 – 12 October 1923), known as "Charles", was an English banker and entomologist and a member of the Rothschild family. He is remembered for The Rothschild List, a list he made in 1915 of 284 sites across Britain that he considered suitable for nature reserves.

Family

A slide image of a female plague flea collected and described by Charles and his colleague Wollaston

Nathaniel was the son of Nathan Rothschild, 1st Baron Rothschild, and Emma Rothschild (née von Rothschild). He predeceased his older brother Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild (1868–1937), who died without issue. The peerage therefore passed to Charles's son Victor Rothschild, 3rd Baron Rothschild. He boarded at Harrow School, which he found somewhat traumatising for incidents of bullying on account of his religion.[1]

He worked as a partner in the family bank NM Rothschild and Sons in London. He went to Rothschild's Bank every morning; despite all his interest in science and in natural history, he never missed a day. He was also very interested in the gold refinery operated by Rothschild's, and invented a variety of devices for collecting gold, and working on gold from a scientific point of view. He also became Chairman of the Alliance Assurance Company.[2]

Career

Entomology

However, like his zoologist brother, he devoted much of his energies to entomology and natural history collecting. His enormous collection of some 260,000 fleas is now in the Rothschild Collection at the Natural History Museum; he described about 500 new flea species.[3] One of these, which he discovered and named, was the plague vector flea, Xenopsylla cheopis, also known as the oriental rat flea, which he collected at Shendi, Sudan, on an expedition in 1901, publishing his finding in 1903.[4]

Nature conservation

Today Rothschild is regarded as a pioneer of nature conservation in Britain, and is credited with establishing the UK's first nature reserve when he bought Wicken Fen, near Ely, in 1899.[5] Wicken Fen was presented to the National Trust but the Trust declined to take Woodwalton Fen, near Huntingdon, which Rothschild bought in 1910, and this wetland, now a National Nature Reserve, was kept as a private nature reserve.[6] During his lifetime he built and managed his estate at Ashton Wold[7] in Northamptonshire to maximise its suitability for wildlife, especially butterflies. He was concerned about the loss of wildlife habitats, and in 1912 set up the Society for the Promotion of Nature Reserves, the forerunner of The Wildlife Trusts partnership. In 1915 he produced "The Rothschild List",[8] a schedule of the best 284 wildlife sites in the country, some of which were purchased as nature reserves.[6]

Public service

As well as a Lieutenant of the City of London, Rothschild became a JP for the county of Northamptonshire in 1902.[9] He served as High Sheriff of Northamptonshire for 1905.[10]

Personal life

In 1907, Rothschild married Rózsika Edle von Wertheimstein (1870–1940), a descendant of an old Austrian-Jewish family that was ennobled long before the Rothschilds.[11] She was born in 1870 at Nagyvárad, Hungary (now the Romanian city of Oradea), the daughter of a retired army officer, Baron Alfred Edler von Wertheimstein. Alfred's sister Charlotte was married to Moritz von Königswarter.[12] Rózsika was one of seven children. She was a very beautiful woman with dark brown eyes. Each eye had a purple ring to it, and they could flicker strangely. She was also a voracious reader. Every day she would read a Hungarian newspaper, a German newspaper, an English newspaper, and quite often a French one, too. She read all the political articles in these papers. Rózsika had even been a champion lawn tennis player in Hungary.

After their marriage on 6 February 1907, they lived at Tring and in London. Rothschild, who worked in the family’s banking business, was a dedicated naturalist in his spare time: the young couple had met on a butterfly-collecting trip in the Carpathian Mountains. In the evening, they might go together to a concert or a dinner party, but he really preferred to sort out his butterflies. Together, they had four children:

Suffering from encephalitis, in 1923 Rothschild committed suicide.[13] His suicide, when he was 46 years old, was a severe shock to his wife and four children. Rózsika died on 30 June 1940.[14]

Ancestry

See also

References

Notes
  1. ↑ Hannah Rothschild, "The Butterfly Effect", Bonhams Magazine, Spring 2009, page 21.
  2. ↑ Who Was Who, 1916-1928. A and C Black. 1947. p. 1277.
  3. ↑ "Siphonaptera collections". Natural History Museum, London. Retrieved 16 February 2017.
  4. ↑ "Charles Rothschild". The Wildlife Trusts. Retrieved 1 November 2016.
  5. ↑ "Charles Rothschild: The banker who changed the world for good". The Independent. 2012-05-12. Retrieved 2017-07-31.
  6. 1 2 Barnes, Simon (2015). "Prophet and Loss". Retrieved 16 January 2016.
  7. ↑ Pevsner, Nikolaus (1961). The Buildings of England – Northamptonshire. London and New Haven: Yale University Press. pp. 94–5. ISBN 978-0-300-09632-3.
  8. ↑ "The Rothschild List: 1915-2015 A review 100 years on" (PDF). The Wildlife Trusts. 2015. Retrieved 7 May 2017.
  9. ↑ Kelly's Handbook to the Titled, Landed and Official Classes, 1916. Kelly's. p. 1277.
  10. ↑ "No. 27777". The London Gazette. 21 March 1905. p. 2179.
  11. ↑ Fraenkel, Josef (1967). The Jews of Austria: Essays on their Life, History and Destruction. Vallentine, Mitchell. p. 103.
  12. ↑ Drewes, Kai (2013). Jüdischer Adel: Nobilitierungen von Juden im Europa des 19. Jahrhunderts. Campus Verlag. p. 361. ISBN 9783593397757.
  13. ↑ "Nathaniel (Charles) Rothschild (1877-1923)| Rothschild Family". family.rothschildarchive.org. Retrieved 2017-07-31.
  14. ↑ https://www.rothschildarchive.org/genealogy/
Sources
  • Rothschild, Miriam (1983) Dear Lord Rothschild ISBN 0-09-153740-1
  • Reminiscences by Rozsika's daughter, Dame Miriam Rothschild, published in the Jewish Quarterly
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