George Beauchamp (music hall)

Sarsfield Patrick Beauchamp (20 February 1862 – 28 December 1900), known professionally as George Beauchamp, was an English music hall singer and comedian.

He was born in Southwark, London, the son of a policeman, and in early life worked at a printing company, eventually becoming a compositor. By 1879, he joined a theatre company specialising in melodramas and Shakespeare, and in 1882 promoted himself as an "eccentric vocal character comedian". He appeared in shows and pantomimes in the north of England, and then in London, and made several visits to perform in the United States as well as one to Australia in 1898.[1]

In the biography of Charles Morton, "The Father of the Music Halls", Beauchamp was described as "very eccentric but otherwise estimable..... [a] really droll comic-singer, who had the funniest of faces..".[2] His most successful songs included "Get Your Hair Cut" (written by Beauchamp with Charles Osborne and Fred Eplett, 1891), "She Was One of the Early Birds" (written by T. W. Connor, 1895), and "Has Anybody Seen Our Cat?" (also by Connor, 1899).[3] The song "She Was One of the Early Birds" was his biggest success, described in The Era in 1895 as "the rage of London".[1]

He married fellow performer Nellie Lingard in 1889, but she died of tuberculosis in late 1899, aged 31. Beauchamp continued to perform, but died in hospital in Liverpool while on tour the following year, aged 38. His death was from pneumonia, possibly the result of "a somewhat dissipated lifestyle".[1]

References
  1. Charlton, Peter (2011). "She Was a Dear Little Dicky Bird". Music Hall Studies (7): 20–26.
  2. W. H. Morton and H. Chance Newton, Sixty Years' Stage... The Life of Charles Morton, Gale & Polden, 1905, pp.177-179
  3. Raymond Mander and Joe Mitchenson, British Music Hall: A story in pictures, Studio Vista, 1965, p.101
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