Early Life
Phillips was born in London on 6 August 1855 to a family of lower middle-class merchants, who formed part of a growing group of Jews set to play a major role in the commerce and politics of nineteenth-century Britain. His early formal education was limited, with a good grounding in French and chemistry. He started working for his father as a bookkeeper at the age of 14, but studied privately to become a member of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers. He arrived at the Kimberley diamond fields in 1875, having walked most of the way there from Cape Town, and worked for Joseph Benjamin Robinson as a diamond sorter, fleetingly ran a newspaper, The Independent and later became a mine manager. He made and lost his first fortune in Kimberley with investments in the diamond industry.
Read more about this topic: Lionel Phillips
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early and/or life:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“It is easy to see that, even in the freedom of early youth, an American girl never quite loses control of herself; she enjoys all permitted pleasures without losing her head about any of them, and her reason never lets the reins go, though it may often seem to let them flap.”
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)
“It had been drilled into us that when an audience pays to see a performance, it is entitled to the best performance you can give. Nothing in your personal life must interfere, neither fatigue, illness, nor anxiety—not even joy.”
—Lillian Gish (1896–1993)