Rowland John Beech and Charles Madocks Beech

A carte-de-visite portrait of Rowland John Beech (1853-1919) and his younger brother Charles Madocks Beech (1855-1887).

Born on 28 May 1855 at 16 Cadogan Place in Chelsea, Charles Madocks Beech was the second son of James Beech and his wife Emily Charlotte née Madocks. He was baptised at Holy Trinity in Chelsea on 7 July 1855.

He appears on the 1861 census, aged 5, living with his family at Brandon Lodge in Warwickshire. Also present on the night of the census were a governess and sixteen servants, including a butler, two footmen, a coachman and a groom, with various gamekeepers and gardeners living nearby.

The family were at the same address when the census was taken in 1871.

In 1872 Charles became a Lieutenant in the 2nd Warwickshire Militia. He was promoted to the rank of Captain in 1877.

Captain Charles Madocks Beech never married. He died, aged 32, on 25 July 1887 at Holme Chase, Weybridge, Surrey. He left an estate valued at £44,165.

His will was proved on the 21 October 1877 by his executors, his brothers Rowland John Beech and Henry Edward Beech. ‘The testator leaves £200 each to the London Samaritan Institution (High-street, Homerton), the Victoria Hospital for Children (Queen’s-road West, Chelsea), the Marine Society (Bishopsgate), the Royal Nautical Lifeboat Institution, and to the vicar and churchwardens of Kingsley (Staffordshire), to be expended by them for the benefit of, or in and about, the Kingsley Church Reading-rooms; £10,000, upon trust, for his niece, Sibyl Esther Emily Napier; his furniture, pictures, plate, books, rifles, guns, and effects, and all his estate in the United States of North America, to his brother Rowland John; and a few other bequests. As to the residue of his real and personal estate, he gives one-third each to his brothers Henry Edward and Reginald: one-third upon the trusts of the marriage settlement of his sister, Alice Mary Napier’ (Flintshire Observer Mining Journal and General Advertiser, 27 October 1887).

Photographed by Henry Peach Robinson of Leamington, Warwickshire.