MRS. BEETON
THE STOWMARKET CONNECTION

Isabella Mary Mayson was born in pre-Victorian London on 12 March 1836, at 24 Milk Street, in a district called Cripplegate Within. The most notable (and uncontrollable) element in her young life was her destiny to be the first born of twenty one brothers and sisters! Her parents were Elizabeth Jerram and Benjamin Mayson. After Benjamin died, leaving his wife with four children, her mother remarried, to a Henry Dorling who was financially secure as the Clerk of Epsom Racecourse and also had four children of his own. Therefore, they not only started off their new marriage with eight children but remarkably produced another thirteen between them. These days it is hard for one to imagine living with a family of any significant size but it is almost impossible to imagine one of this magnitude, what with the accounting for and gathering together of so many siblings as would be required at such occasions as meals and bed times.
Being the eldest child of this continually growing family she naturally assumed the duties of being the principle babysitter, a role she accepted as needs must and worked at tirelessly. This most likely contributed to the development her common-sense attitude to life and her lean towards efficiency and economy. These attributes, coupled with a good education (unusual for woman in those times), would later allow her to create the kind of book that she did and to become the enthusiastic creator, experimenter, organizer and publisher of recipes that would be destined to change the cooking world forever.
   

Isabella married into the Beeton family in 1856, and proudly carried their name from relative obscurity to fame! Her husband was Samuel Orchart Beeton, who descended from a family whose roots were firmly entrenched in Suffolk. His great grandfather, John Beeton, moved to Stowmarket from Wickhambrook in the Southwest of the county in the middle 1700’s. John Beeton who was a Master Bricklayer married a local girl Thomasin Hunt from Great Finborough, in 1770. 

They went on to have nine children. Their third son, Sam, was christened in Stowmarket Church in 1774, as were all of his brothers and sisters. About 1796 the family moved from their home in Crowe Street, Stowmarket to Great Finborough, where the Hall was being rebuilt for the new owner Roger Pettiward and John’s talents were needed as a Master Bricklayer.

Young Sam by this time had decided to move to London to seek his fortune, and he set himself up in the Dolphin Tavern in Milk Street, in the City of London. He married a Suffolk girl, Lucy Elsden from Hadleigh, and they spent the next thirty years raising a family and establishing the Beeton name in London. However, in the end, Sam and Lucy returned to their Suffolk roots and were buried peacefully side by side in St Andrew’s churchyard, Great Finborough, close to old John Beeton and Thomasin.

Sam and Lucy’s eldest son, Samuel Powell Beeton, inherited the Dolphin on his father’s death and continued his father’s good work in the tavern, raising a brood of seven children in the busy times of Victorian London life, surrounded by local street markets and Manchester Warehouses. Samuel Powell’s eldest son, named Samuel Orchart after his father, spent a lot of his young life in Hadleigh with his grandmother Lucy, who had returned to her home town after the death of her husband. Samuel Orchart decided the tavern life was not for him, and turned instead to a publishing career, which he achieved through a seven year apprenticeship in London.
In about 1855 Isabella Mayson entered his life. She had also been born in Milk Street before moving as a young child to Epsom with her family. Despite the distance, the two mothers (who had been friends for years) had kept in touch, and probably encouraged the attraction that had sprung up between their offspring. In the summer of 1856 the Beeton and Mayson name joined together to create – Isabella Beeton.
She, with Samuel Orchart's help, created a book called Beeton's Book of Household Management. No other work had been so complete and so well-written in its straight forward, common-sense approach to the total running of the home and was exactly what was needed at the time of the rapidly increasing Victorian middle class. The cookery section took up most of the space in the book and it was the exceptional layout of the easy to follow recipes that made the cookery section - and therefore the book - famous and was destined to be her greatest achievement.
The young couple led a highly successful business and personal life together, their strengths complimenting each other and, despite the loss of their first two children, went on to have two further sons before Isabella’s untimely death at the age of 28 early in 1865. Samuel Orchart never made a complete recovery from losing his wife, and eventually died 12 years later, and was buried in Norwood alongside his wife and sons.

The headstone of the graves of Samuel and Lucy Beeton, now laid flat in Great Finborough churchyard.

Thanks to Isobel Beeton and Martin Beeton, Great great niece and nephew to Isabella and Samuel Orchart Beeton for putting together this piece.

A new biography Of Isabella Beeton was published in 2005 details are as follows 

"The Short Life And Long Times Of Mrs Beeton" by Kathryn Hughes
Publication Fourth Estate, 2005 
ISBN 1841153737 
525 p., 24 cm 

STOWMARKET HISTORY AND HERITAGE
2007
email neil@stowman.plus.com