Early business in Manchester, 1798-c.1809

Born in Frankfurt at the house of the Hinterpfann on 16 September 1777, Nathan Mayer Rothschild died in that city on 28 July 1836. In the intervening 59 years, Nathan Mayer Rothschild - the name he never changed in spite of honours offered and declined - led his brothers to the pinnacle of the financial world.

Nathan Mayer Rothschild, the first of his brothers to found a branch of the family firm, arrived in Britain in 1798, aged 21. With funds from his father's merchant house, he made his first home in Manchester, the centre of the English cotton trade, establishing himself as an innovative textile merchant in the closing years of the eighteenth century, setting up a cloth wholesale business - N M Rothschild - to streamline the supply of printed cottons and other textiles from British manufactories to the European markets. He quickly became accepted as a 'Manchester man' and then after a decade, encouraged by his success, moved to London to establish himself as a banker.