Barnato, Barnet Isaacs

Known as Barney Barnato, a Cockney comic who travelled to South Africa and became a millionaire in the Kimberley diamond trade. FH met him in South Africa in 1896, in the days when he was running the Saturday Review. An extreme example of the self-made man, who had almost literally clawed his way to the top, and who exhibited the typical petty meanness of the breed - he was noted for never buying a drink - Barnato killed himself by throwing himself from a steamer to England, possibly in a fit of depression associated with overwork and anxiety.