Ellis Arthur Franklin

Who was Ellis Arthur Franklin?

Ellis Arthur Franklin OBE was a London merchant banker.

Franklin was born into an affluent Anglo-Jewish family, and married Muriel Frances Waley; their daughter was Rosalind Franklin, one of five children.

He was a banker at Keyser's Bank, where his father was a senior partner. His uncle was Herbert Samuel, Home Secretary, and the first High Commissioner for the British Mandate of Palestine. His siblings included Helen Caroline Franklin, wife to Norman de Mattos Bentwich, Attorney General in the British Mandate of Palestine, active in trade union organisation, Women's Suffrage, and the London County Council on which she was a member, and Hugh Franklin, a militant suffragist and penal reform activist.

Franklin became a teacher of a class in Electricity at The Working Men’s College in 1919, having been introduced to the College by his uncle Lionel Jacob. By 1922 he had become Vice Principal of the College and was instrumental in attracting donations to the College from the City, and new College Corporation members from the Home Office, The Bar, and the City.

Franklin had a strong social conscience.