Diamond magnate Barney Barnato went overboard from a mail steamer in 1897, a blackmailer shot his nephew Woolf Joel dead the next year, and his son inherited at two

Barnett Isaacs was born in London on 5 July 1852. He reached Kimberley in 1873 with about £50 and took the surname his brother Harry used there, Barnato. The brothers started the diamond firm Barnato Brothers in 1874. In 1876 he bought four claims in the Kimberley mine, and he was Cecil Rhodes's rival until De Beers merged with his Kimberley Central company. He was once said to be worth $85 million; the Jewish Encyclopedia doubts he ever had more than $35 million. He doubled his fortune in the 1894 to 1895 gold-share boom and lost most of it in the 1896 crash. On 14 June 1897, sailing home to England on the steamer Scot with his wife, he went overboard near Madeira and drowned. The inquest at Southampton found "death by drowning while temporarily insane." A crew member testified that his last word as he fell was "murder!" His family rejected suicide. His estate was valued at about $3 million and divided among his family. In March 1898 a blackmailer calling himself Baron von Veltheim shot his nephew Woolf Joel dead at the Barnato Brothers office in Johannesburg. Another nephew, Solly Joel, took over the firm. Barnato's son Woolf inherited a multimillion-pound fortune at two and became one of the "Bentley Boys" racing drivers. Barnato is buried at Willesden, London.