Peter Urbanus Sartoris (French: Pierre-Urbain Sartoris; –1833)[1] [2] was a Swiss banker who had offices in London and Sceaux, Hauts-de-Seine.
Born around 1767 in Geneva, the son of a Huguenot banker, Jean-Jacques Sartoris, and Anne Greffuhle (aunt of Jean-Henry-Louis Greffulhe), he was baptised on 5 August 1773. He used to live in Gloucester Place[3] close to Regent's Park, and married 1813 Hester Matilda Tunno, daughter of the Scottish banker John Tunno (1746–1819) and sister of Edward Rose Tunno. They had six children including a son, the British statesman Edward John Sartoris, and a daughter who later married Louis Victor Arthur des Acres de l'Aigle.[4]
Shortly after 1818, he acted as first consul of the Swiss Confederacy in the United Kingdom, then was succeeded by Alexandre Prévost[5] [6] Prévost wrote of him : 'He [Urbain Sartoris] had both good fortune and ambition, or rather self-pride. Thanks to his diplomatic charge, he thought he could fling open the gates of high society for himself; yet no sooner had he passed the line he had been craving for, did he stop caring for a second-order office, which he openly declared to me, offering me to be introduced as his successor'.[7]
During the French Restoration, Sartoris invested millions of francs in inland waterways, lived by then in his manor at Sceaux.[8] He bought the estates of la Garenne de Colombes, which his inheritors sold by pieces around 1865.[9]
He died in Paris on 30 November 1833.
Peter and Hester Sartoris had six children:[10]