Orpheus Beaumont

Orpheus Maud Beaumont (; 14 September 1863 – 7 November 1951) was a British-born New Zealand woman who invented the Salvus life jacket.

Biography Beaumont was born on 14 September 1863 and baptised on 21 October 1863 according to her baptismal record. She was born in Jersey, Channel Islands, United Kingdom to Mary and William Newman. Beaumont was ten when her father died. Her mother migrated to Dunedin, New Zealand, with her three youngest children.

Beaumont's somewhat unusual first name is bound up with HMS Orpheus on which her teenage brother, Henry Newman, was a seaman. The Orpheus was carrying British soldiers on their way to New Zealand to fight in the Waikato Land Wars when the ship ran aground on the sandbar at the entrance to Auckland’s Manukau Harbour on 7 February 1863.

Beaumont was listed as 2nd Stewardess on the SS Waihora in March or April 1889. Norman Beaumont was Chief Officer on the Waihora in 1889. The couple were married on 17 June 1890. By that time Norman Beaumont had been promoted to be captain of the Union Steamship Company. They had two children, Llewelyn, born in 1892 in Suva, Fiji and Constance. Between January 1918 and June 1919, she and her husband obtained patents for a new type of life jacket. In 1919 she opened a factory for production of the Salvus life jackets in Liverpool and London.

Beaumont died on 7 November 1951 and is buried at Karitane Cemetery, Karitane, Otago, New Zealand.

The Salvus life jacket Beaumont was allegedly motivated to develop a new type of life jacket following the shipwreck that almost claimed the life of her brother Henry Newman in 1863, the presumed death by drowning of her brother William Newman in 1912, and the sinking of the Titanic. A newspaper reported Henry Newman's death from a "lung disease" as occurring in 1898.

On 15 April 1912, the RMS Titanic sank with the loss of approximately 1,500 lives. The Convention for the Saving of Life at Sea was adopted in 1914, in response to the Titanic disaster. Article 51(1) states "A life-jacket of an approved type, or other appliance of equal buoyancy and capable of being fitted on the body, shall be carried for every person on board, and, in addition, a sufficient number of life-jackets, or other equivalent appliances, suitable for children." Following the tragedy, the British Board of Trade held a competition calling for the invention of a better life jacket than the cork model currently in use at the time.

The British Board of Trade introduced a new regulation to the effect that, before it could be approved, a life-jacket had to satisfy certain required conditions even if it were put on the wearer back to front, or upside down. By April 1919 only five types of life-jackets complied with the conditions, one of which was the New Zealand Salvus. Beaumont opened two factories, in London and in Liverpool. 30,000 life jackets were commissioned and used by the British fleet, the Union Steam Ship Company, and several ferry companies.

The Salvus was eventually superseded by foam-filled life jackets at the beginning of World War II.

Patents issued Patents were issued in several countries to the Beaumonts for the Salvus life jacket.

Legacy In 2013, a documentary film The Drowning Country was released by Caroline Fitzgerald, Beaumont's great-granddaughter.