Joseph Salvador

Who was Joseph Salvador?

Joseph Salvador was a British-Jewish businessman, perhaps most notable for being the first and only Jew to have become a director of the British East India Company. He was descended from Portuguese Sephardic Jews who had escaped persecution at home during the Portuguese Inquisition and had left for the Netherlands. From there they went to England in the eighteenth century.

He belonged to the London Portuguese Sephardi Jewish synagogue and was a leader in the affairs of this Portuguese-speaking community.

He was a prominent businessman and financier, and a prime mover in lobbying for the 1753 Jew Bill. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1759. When George III ascended the throne of England, it was Salvador who headed the seven-man delegation that congratulated him on behalf of England's Jewish community.

Salvador was also a great patron; he funded passage for 42 Jews to the colony of Georgia in 1733. These colonists would lay the groundwork for what was to become the Jewish community of the city of Savannah and eventually Charleston, South Carolina.

He was eventually financially ruined after the great earthquake that destroyed Lisbon in 1755, as he had invested considerably in property in that city.