Known as Reginald or Reggie to his family and friends, the third David Salomons was brought up at Broomhill and educated at Eton and at Gonville and Caius College , Cambridge , which had also been his father's college. He then started training as a lawyer.

After Cambridge he travelled widely; first to France , Italy and Spain , and then to the East. In 1910 he and his cousin, Arthur Paget, spent two and a half months exploring Japan , travelling many hundreds of miles by train, horse, rickshaw, boat and on foot. Arthur had previously travelled in Japan , and married there in 1911. Reginald was greatly impressed by the people and the scenery and, on his return to England , took lessons in Japanese and established links with the Japanese consulate.

Reginald wrote an account of his travels, An Outsider's Impression of Japan , under the name R. Nagano. Although never published, it gives an interesting description of the Japan of 1910 and of his reaction to the country and its peoples. He seems to have been particularly interested in Japanese religious beliefs and culture, remarking “Every religion gives a different theory as to what happens after death, but none have been absolutely proved; personally I incline to the Buddhist theory, a great deal of which science has proved to be correct”. The Salomons' tradition of religious tolerance and interest in science was clearly present in the third generation.

Reginald died in the First World War, just after his thirtieth birthday in October 1915.