Lionel Phillips

Sir Lionel Phillips, 1st Baronet (6 August 1855 – 2 July 1936) was a British-born South African financier, mining magnate and politician.

Within a short while, Phillips became a leading player in the mining industry, as well as an active supporter of the Uitlander movement against the Transvaal Republic government.

The Phillips' house, Hohenheim, was built where the Johannesburg General Hospital presently stands, after Florence had suggested the laying out of the suburb Parktown, to escape the dust problem created by the ever-growing mine dumps south of the city.

Hohenheim was the first mansion built in Parktown, designed by Frank Emley in 1892, and later became the home of Sir Percy FitzPatrick, author and mining financier.

He and the other ringleaders, including Colonel Frank Rhodes (brother of Cecil) and John Hays Hammond, were initially sentenced to death, but after six months of imprisonment most were reprieved by President Kruger and each fined £25,000.

Phillips was cautioned to refrain from dabbling in politics on pain of exile, a warning which he ignored by publishing an inflammatory article in the Nineteenth Century, resulting in his being banished from the Transvaal by State Attorney Jan Smuts – Jameson and his fellow raiders were sent to London by Kruger, there to be tried by a Crown court, much to the embarrassment of all involved, while Rhodes was forced to resign as chairman of the British South Africa Company and as Cape Prime Minister.

Phillips settled at and almost completely rebuilt Tylney Hall in Hampshire, England, importing a sixteenth-century ceiling from the Grimation Palace in Florence.

Years before, during his Kimberley days, he had lost his footing and tumbled about 100 metres down the steep slopes of the diamond diggings – he survived the fall with a few scratches.

In 1914, he moved to London as managing director of the Central Mining Company and advised the British government on the metal industry during the First World War.