Emanuel Raphael Belilios

Common card · No. 345208

Emanuel Raphael Belilios, (14 November 1837 – 11 November 1905) was a banker, opium dealer, philanthropist and businessman, born in Calcutta, British India and active in Hong Kong. His father, Raphael Emanuel Belilios, was a member of a Jewish Venetian family of Sephardic origin. Belilios married Simha Ezra in 1855, and in 1862 he settled in Hong Kong and engaged in trade. His success saw him described in the British press at the time as "one of the merchant princes of the colony." In the 1870s, Belilios was chairman of the Hongkong and Shanghai Hotels, Limited. He tried to establish relations with the then British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli by proposing a marble and bronze statue of Disraeli, which was rejected by the prime minister. Belilios erected the Beaconsfield Arcade, a reference to Disraeli title Lord Beaconsfield, in Hong Kong instead. However until his death Bellios would annually send a wreath to decorate the statue of Benjamin Disraeli on Parliament Square. He became...

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