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.

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. At this age he already showed "signs of considerable taste for Art and a dramatic talent", according to a tribute in the Journal of the Society of Architects. He was trained as an architect by his uncle Charles Beazley, "the architect of the much admired Church at Feversham".

As a youth, Beazley volunteered for service in the Peninsular War, in Spain, and experienced many adventures, which he was fond of relating in later life to his friends. Among these, according to his account, was being found unconscious and taken for dead, waking up to find himself laid out for burial. Another was his part in the daring escape to Spain of the Duchesse d'Angoulême, daughter of Louis XVI, fleeing from Napoleon's forces in 1815. His account of the escape was published by his daughter after his death.

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.

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