Lucy Beeton

Lucy Beeton (or Beadon; 14 May 1829 – 7 July 1886) was an Aboriginal Tasmanian schoolteacher, trader and Christian leader.

Her father was Thomas Beeton, who was descended from a London Jewish family and had been transported to Tasmania in 1817 after mutinying from the Royal Navy. After completing his sentence in 1824, he established himself as a sealer in Bass Strait. Aboriginal women on the islands were abducted and traded by sealers. It is said that Beeton was devoted to his wife and children and did not treat Bet/Emmerenna as a servant as other sealers treated Aboriginal women.

In 1831, two years after Lucy Beeton was born, her father was forced to leave Gun Carriage Island so that George Augustus Robinson, the Protector of Aborigines, could establish an Aboriginal-only settlement. Lucy and her mother had to stay in the settlement on the island. Canon Brownrigg had also visited Beeton and the islands and spoke highly of her. By 1886 she owned her own cutter, "Bella Beeton" and sailed and traded in it with her brother Harry Beeton. She later ran her own sheep and cattle station on Badger Island. Stephen Murray-Smith called her, “the most notable personality produced by the second generation of islanders.”

Lucy Beeton never married but lived with her brothers, James and Henry and their families, in her homestead cottage on Badger Island where she welcomed many visitors and sang hymns.

A shell necklace made by her is held in the collection of the Tasmanian Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery.