Sigismund Neumann

[1] In his late teens, he emigrated to Cape Colony to seek his fortune in the Kimberley diamond mines.

His brother Ludwig moved to London, where he worked with the financiers Leopold Hirsch & Co., who went into the market for mining shares, and made his way in society.

His staff in Johannesburg included Charles Sydney Goldman, who had moved from agriculture into the mining industry.

[8] Others employed by Neumann were Henry Hames Friedlander, a member of the Johannesburg Reform Committee, and William Daw, who in 1915 became chairman of the Chamber of Mines.

Neumann has been classified as a "fringe operator" or share promoter, but by 1895 he was also a major player in the mines market, directly or through others controlling directorships in 37 companies.

A. Hobson in The Speaker, "The Structure of South African Finance", of April 1905, placed Neumann at this period in the Randlord political and financial "inner ring", with Alfred Beit, Leander Starr Jameson, James Rochfort Maguire, the banker Lewis Loyd Michell and Julius Wernher.

The City of London was, at least privately, not impressed: Kleinworts in 1909 for Goldman Sachs was advising against the bank's acceptances, on the basis of Neumann's track record of share promotion.

In London, the Randlords mostly settled in the West End neighbourhoods of Mayfair and Belgravia, constantly vying with each other.

[24] George Cornwallis-West in his memoirs gave a deer stalking anecdote, set above Braemar, from a time when he was Neumann's guest.

[33] Sir Sigismund Neumann, 1st Baronet, died aged 59 at "Remuera", Denton Road, Eastbourne, Sussex[1] on 13 September 1916 and is buried with his wife Anna in a family vault on the east side of Highgate Cemetery.

[10] The Witbank Colliery in time became one of the world's largest coal mines, producing around 40 million tons a year in the early 1970s, almost two-thirds of the South Africa's entire yield.

Neumann married Anna Allegra (1864 – 1951), daughter of Jacques Hakim of Alexandria in 1890, in Vevey, Switzerland.