Emanuel Raphael Belilios, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death
TweetEmanuel Raphael Belilios
Hong Kong politician
Date of Birth: 14-Nov-1837
Place of Birth: Kolkata, West Bengal, India
Date of Death: 11-Nov-1905
Profession: merchant
Zodiac Sign: Scorpio 
About Emanuel Raphael Belilios
- Emanuel Raphael Belilios, CMG, JP (14 November 1837 – 11 November 1905) was a Hong Kong Jewish opium dealer and businessman. Belilios was born in Calcutta, British India on 14 November 1837.
- His father was Raphael Emanuel Belilios, member of a Jewish Venetian family.
- Belilios married Simha Ezra in 1855, and in 1862 he settled in Hong Kong and engaged in trade.
- His fabulous 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 declined by the prime minister himself.
- 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 Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Chairman from 1876 to 1882, appointed to the Legislative Council of Hong Kong in 1881 and as the Council's Senior Unofficial Member from 1892 to 1900. Belilios gained his reputation as a philanthropist.
- In the years 1887 and 1888, Belilios gave out two annual scholarships valued at $60, to the students of the Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese and studying at the Alice Memorial Hospital.
- Later in 1888, Belilios was a Director of the Hong Kong, Canton & Macao Steamboat Company In August 1889, Belilios donated $25,000 to set up a girls' government school.
- The Belilios Public School was renamed from Central School for Girls in honour of Belilios.His first son David Belilios perished in the plague of 1898.Regarding the Chinese population Belilios observed favourably that: “The native Chinese make no difference between a Jew and Christian.
- Both are foreigners in their eyes, but, if anything they are better affected towards the Jew who they regard as Asiatic like themselves.”Belilios died in London on 11 November 1905.
- On his death he bequeathed a ÂŁ250,000 to found a free college for Jewish children in Calcutta.
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