Harriet Samuel

1836-1908

Jeweller

If you ever stopped to wonder who was H. Samuel, the person behind the eponymous high street jewellery stores, you would possibly not conclude it was a Victorian Jewish lady in Liverpool.

Harriet Samuel is remembered at Willesden Cemetery by a headstone inside a gloriously decorative monument styled like a Greek temple, marked by six sets of grooved columns and reached by steps.

Harriet was the daughter of Schreiner Wolfe of Great Yarmouth. She married into a clock-making family in Liverpool who had come from Silesia in the Austrian Empire in the 1770s.

When her father-in-law and husband died little more than 18 months apart in the early 1860s, she took over the business and started selling watches by mail order from a shop in Manchester’s Market Street. Her son Edgar joined her.

They started opening shops, branching out to other Lancashire towns until the demand was such that Edgar, who changed his name to Edgar Samuel Edgar, opened a factory in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter.

After World War Two Harriet’s grandsons built the chain to more than 200 shops across Britain. H. Samuel is still a high street name, part of Signet Jewellers Ltd.

Harriet Samuel
© Alamy Stock Photo