Samuel Beazley

Samuel Beazley (1786–1851) was an English architect, novelist, and playwright. He became the leading theatre architect of his time and the first notable English expert in that field.

After fighting in the Peninsular War, Beazley returned to London and quickly became a successful architect. He combined this with writing more than a hundred theatre works, generally in a comic style. He is best remembered as a theatre architect, with two major London theatres of his still surviving, together with the well-known façade of another, but he was also an important figure in railway architecture, with many commissions in the south east of England.

Beazley's other activities included translating opera libretti into English, and writing novels and non-fictional works on architecture. He was also a participant in the Berners Street hoax.

Biography Early years and Berners Street hoax Beazley was born in Westminster, the son of Samuel Beazley, and his wife Ann (née Frith). Both facets of Beazley's future career were displayed when he was still a boy: at school at Acton, aged 12, he wrote a farce and constructed the stage on which he and his schoolfriends performed it. He was trained as an architect by his uncle Charles Beazley, "the architect of the much admired Church at Feversham".

In 1810, Beazley made a bet with his friend, Theodore Hook, over whether Hook could transform any house in London into the most talked-about address in a week. This became known as the Berners Street Hoax, in which Hook sent out thousands of letters in the name of the resident at 54 Berners Street, requesting deliveries, visitors and assistance. Hundreds of persons – including tradesmen, doctors, lawyers, priests, the Governor of the Bank of England, the Duke of York, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Lord Mayor of the City of London – arrived at the address on 27 November.

Architect and playwright After returning to London, Beazley practised as an architect and, at the same time, wrote plays. He had already had a work professionally produced at the Theatre Royal English Opera, Lyceum in 1811: The Boarding House; or, Five Hours at Brighton, a musical farce in two acts. In 1816 he designed a new theatre for the site, For the same theatre, Beazley wrote the short operetta Fire and Water in 1817; it was revived on numerous occasions over the next three years. "The business of this piece is made up of the scheme of a petulant old man, who proposes to marry a young lady, and of the efforts of a rattle brained young lover to baffle him and to carry off the prize."

Beazley continued to write for the stage, producing more than a hundred comedies, farces, comic operas, and operettas. In 1829 he wrote The Elephant of Siam and the Fire Fiend, presenting a famous female elephant called Madame D'Jeck, showing off the tricks she could perform. The historian John Earl notes that the elephant, rather than the author, took a curtain call. |group= n Among Beazley's other works were Gretna Green, The Steward, Old Customs, The Lottery Ticket, My Uncle, Bachelors' Wives, Hints to Husbands and The Bull's Head. He also designed the St James's Theatre, the City of London Theatre in Norton Folgate (both in the 1830s) and the Royalty Theatre in 1840. Major additions to existing theatres included the Strand front of the Adelphi Theatre, and the Russell Street colonnade of the Drury Lane Theatre (1831), among many others. Earl agreed, describing Vanbrugh and Beazley as "soldiers, adventurers, playwrights, and architects."

Beazley died suddenly at his home, Tonbridge Castle, Kent, on 13 October 1851, aged 65. He was buried at Bermondsey Old Church, London. Many years earlier he had composed his own epitaph:

Here lies Samuel Beazley, Who lived hard and died easily

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