Leo Schuster

Leopold Schuster (1791 – 27 February 1871 ) was a German-born British cotton-trader and merchant banker, who was the Chairman of the London and Brighton Railway and of the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway, and a buyer of The Crystal Palace.

Chairman, LB&SCR After Laing retired at the end of 1855 to pursue a political career, Schuster replaced him as chairman of the LB&SCR, instituting a policy of rapidly expanding new routes throughout South London, Sussex, and East Surrey. Some of these routes were financed and built by the company itself, while others were built by independent local companies, set up with the intention of connecting their town to the growing railway network, and with the intention of sale or lease to the LB&SCR. Schuster accelerated the speed of mileage increase after appointing Frederick Banister as the new Chief Engineer in 1860. Resultantly, between 1857 and 1865 a further were constructed or authorised.

Crystal Palace In the 1850s, Schuster and Laing were both members of a consortium of eight men who bought The Crystal Palace

Personal life

His elder son, by his first wife Emilie, who was the daughter of M. L. Getz of Frankfurt, was Samuel Leo Schuster (11 May 1830 – 23 December 1884) who married the eldest daughter of the 5th Earl of Orkney. His daughter Mariana Emily Schuster married the baronet Sir William Dickason Clay and, after Clay's death, subsequently Arthur Haliburton, 1st Baron Haliburton.

By his second marriage to Mary Howard, which occurred in 1845, Leo had two more daughters and a second son who was the arts-patron Leo Francis Howard Schuster (1852 - 1927). He was the uncle of the financier Sir Felix Schuster and Sir Francis Schuster.