Alfred Chester Beatty was a British-Irish mining engineer and philanthropist. He was one of the greatest financial entrepreneurs of the 20th century.
Background
Alfred Chester Beatty was born on February 7, 1875, in New York City, New York, United States. He was the son of John Cuming and Hetty Beatty. Alfred had two brothers, Robert and Gedney. Beatty’s father was a New York banker and stockbroker.
Education
Alfred Chester Beatty attended the Westminster School in Dobbs Ferry, New York. As a teenager, he began learning the tricks of the mining trade from his father’s friend, John C. Randolph, a prospector for the London Exploration Company. After a year at Princeton University in 1893, Beatty transferred to the Columbia University School of Mines and completed a master’s degree in engineering.
Alfred Chester Beatty’s mining career began in Boulder Canyon, Colorado, where he labored in a gold mine before taking over as manager. The experience was financially and personally rewarding: Beatty found new veins of gold that boosted the mine’s profits, and he married the cousin of T. A. Rickard, the man who brought him on board. The newlyweds moved to Cripple Creek in 1899, and four years later Beatty became a chief engineer with the Guggenheim Exploration Company. His shrewd investments in mines had yielded more than one million dollars in assets by 1906.
In 1907 Beatty and his wife moved to New York City. In 1911, his wife died. Beatty, still in mourning, sailed to Europe, where he developed a fondness for jade while perusing antique shops in London. Beatty’s collection of Chinese jade books, with pages made from thin sheets of jade, was the world’s largest. Two years after his wife’s death, Beatty moved to London, residing in Baroda House in Kensington Palace Gardens.
Beatty quickly resumed his work in mining, founding the Selection Trust Limited mining company in 1913. He and his new wife moved from Baroda House to Calehill Park in Kent when World War I began, and Beatty volunteered the use of Baroda House as a soldiers' hospital. After the war, Beatty remained at Calehill Park and moved his collections to Baroda House. By 1933 Baroda House employed a full-time librarian and housed paintings by renowned Impressionist and Barbizon painters.
Denver was the first of several locations, some exotic, that Beatty visited during his mining career. His mining exploits earned him honors such as the insignia of the Order of St. Sava, granted by King Alexander of Yugoslavia in 1930 in recognition of Beatty's role in opening the Trepca mine. Belgium's King Albert made Beatty a commander of the Order of Leopold II for his mining work in the Congo.
A 1913 visit to Egypt marked the beginning of Beatty’s interest in Islamic manuscripts. He built a home in Egypt where he sometimes stayed for health reasons. During World War II, Allied troops fighting in Egypt used the villa as a base, and Beatty again offered Baroda House for use as a hospital. Marital problems after the war led the Beattys to live separately, and Edith moved back to Baroda House. Beatty sold the house after Edith died in 1952.
Beatty had been naturalized as a British citizen in 1933, but in 1950, disgruntled with life in Britain, he moved to Dublin. Triggering Beatty’s move was the British government’s rejection of his request to exchange a large amount of money into francs so he could go to the French Riviera for health reasons.
To house his collection, he endowed the Chester Beatty Library (now Chester Beatty) in Dublin in 1950. Today, the library houses many primary source materials on Beatty, including the manuscript for his memoir, voluminous correspondence, transcribed interviews, and press clippings. In his will, Beatty left the library to the Irish people.
Alfred Chester Beatty was a Republican and Tory in politics. He provided strategic raw materials for the Allies during World War II.
Views
Alfred Chester Beatty was a charitable man, whether in England, where he endowed Chester Beatty Research Institute and later in Ireland when he became a vice-president of the Council for the Blind. He had developed mining enterprises in the United States, Central America, Europe, Africa, and Asia, and from the wealth created by these enterprises, he endowed museums, sponsored academics, and built at his own expense hospitals and medical research institutes.
Membership
Alfred Chester Beatty was a member of the Royal Irish Academy, the Irish Arts Council, and the Sons of the Revolution.
Personality
Alfred Chester Beatty made his fortune primarily in mining and used his wealth to feed his passion for collecting. Beatty's world-class collection included carpets, furniture, paintings, and art objects. But he had a particular fondness for books and manuscripts, especially books on travel, topography, costume, and early printing, and those featuring engravings. He had acquired nearly 3,000 manuscripts by 1952. By his death, Beatty owned 13,000 printed books and manuscripts, the largest collection ever held by an individual.
Interests
collecting
Connections
In 1899 Alfred Chester Beatty married Grace Madeline Rickard. They had a son, Chester, and a daughter, Ninette. In March 1911 his wife died. In 1913 he married Edith Dunn Stone.