They brought him to England at the age of two but sent him back to Germany to study in Coblenz, Cologne and Bonn.
Mayer married Alice Allez, a British subject, in 1886, and was himself naturalized in 1892, at which time the family was living at 6 Maresfield Gardens, Belsize Park, London.
He was elected councillor for the town, and mayor in 1905 and again from 1911 to 1914, when he stood down, at least in part due to his German heritage, which was suspect despite their two sons enlisting with the British Army (Emil died from pneumonia in 1918 and possibly never left Britain).
[1] He was a prominent concert director and musical entrepreneur in the late 19th- and early 20th-centuries, an agent for, amongst others, Anna Pavlova.
[3] He was concert agent for Nellie Melba and the flautist John Lemmone,[4] and Ada Crossley,[5] also Frieda Simonson, an eight-year-old piano prodigy,[6] He arranged tours of Australia for In 1919 he shifted his operational base to New York[9] and shortly after, visited Australia with Mischa Levitski, both adding some support to the establishment of a Sydney Symphony Orchestra, to which end Melba had contributed £200.