MINING MAGNATE DEAD

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19128, 24 September 1936, Page 12

MINING MAGNATE DEAD

ADVENTUROUS CAREER SENTENCED TO DEATH CAPETOWN. July 15. There has just died hero one of the most colourful figures of the early history of South Africa. He was Sir Lionel Phillips. Bart., one of the pioneers of the Kimbcrly diamond fields in the 'eighties and among the last of the great early leaders of the Rand gold mining industry. Of these the most notable was the part lie played in the Reform movement. With three other noted reformers, Colonel Prank Rhodes, brother of Cecil Rhodes, Sir George Parrar and John Hays Hammond — all now dead— he was arrested after the failure of the Jameson Raid and, tried in Pretoria. The four were sentenced to death, despite -world protests, for treason against President Paul Krnger's Republican GovciSiment. This crime was never intended, Phillips wrote later. Jameson's invasion, however, put them in the wrong and the cry arose "that we were trying to steal the .country."

After they had passed some weeks in the condemned cell the deatli sentences were commuted to fines of £25,000 each with banishment from the Republic. Sir Lionel was one of the prime leaders of the gold industry in South Africa, with deep and lasting interest in the country in which lie made his fortune.