Beechey, Mrs

Also known as: Beecher, Mrs

Singer

Collection date: Apr 1910

Area: Warwickshire

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Mrs Hannah Beechey (Beecher) at Shipston Union Workhouse: age 77, 4 songs on 26 Apr 1910 (FT2462ff + FW2207); 4 more on 13 Apr 1911 (FT2592ff); 4 more on 22 Aug 1911 (FT2612); + 1 song sent in by Mrs Stanton on 11 Oct 1911 (FT2707); + 2 final songs on 10 Apr 1912 (FT2774): Sharp initially wrote her name as Mrs  ‘Beecher’ but thereafter as Mrs ‘Beechy’. The workhouse records at the 1911 census have ‘Mrs Hannah Beachey, age 77’ but all other records show ‘Beechey’. She was obviously a good singer, as Sharp went back to her several times:

Hannah Harris was baptised on 29/12/1833 at Chipping Campden, 3rd of 7 children of Samuel Harris, agricultural labourer and his wife Sarah. Sarah died in 1839 and Samuel remarried in 1842. Hannah had left home by 1851 (aged 17) and was working as an ‘operative silk throwster’ in lodgings in Blockley (4 miles south).

Hannah married James Beechey, labourer, at Blockley on 23/10/1859 and they raised a son and a daughter there. The 1901 census ref is RG13/2945 f92 p10, when James was 71 and Hannah 67. At some point in the 1900s they both went into the Shipston workhouse 8 miles away, where, of course, they were separated. James died in 1915 and Hannah in October qr 1917 (6d 816).