BARNATO, BARNETT (1852-1897), English speculator, the son of a Jewish shopkeeper, Isaac Isaacs, was born in Ald gate, London, in 1852. In 1873 he joined his elder brother, Henry, in Kimberley, where the latter had gone, to trade in diamonds. When Isaacs arrived there he changed his name to Barnato, and set up a small store, but soon joined his brother's business; by 1876 he had saved enough to buy his first claim in the Kimberley Diamond Mine, and in 1881 he floated his first company. His ambition to unite all the companies in Kimberley under a single organization led at first to rivalry and finally to amalgamation (1888) with Cecil Rhodes, who had succeeded in consolidating the De Beers Mining companies. In the same year "Barney Barnato"—as he was called—was elected by Kimberley to a seat in the Cape Colony House of Assembly. In 1889 he established a gold mining company on the Rand, and, soon after, floated the Barnato Consolidated Mines Company and the Barnato Bank, while in 1895, he organized the last great boom in gold mines in the Rand. On June 14, 1897, he committed suicide by jumping from a vessel at sea.