Octavius Beale


Octavius Charles Beale was an Irish-born Australian piano manufacturer and a philanthropist.
Beale formed a company to import sewing machines and pianos in 1879, after which he established Australia's first piano factory in Annandale, 1893. The factory ceased production in 1975.
He served as president of the New South Wales Chamber of Commerce and a trustee of the Australian Museum, and the Bank of New South Wales.
In 1903, Beale was appointed one of twelve members of a Royal Commission into the decline of the birth rate in New South Wales. He later conducted, at his own expense, a Royal Commission of Inquiry into Secret Drugs, 1905-1910. The two-volume report records the criminal unscrupulousness of manufacturers and advertisers.

Marriage and family

Beale married Elizabeth Baily at the Congregational Church, Woollahra, New South Wales, and they had twelve children. After Lily's death he married her sister Katherine on 4 March 1903. The children from the first marriage were:
Margaret married the Rev A.P. Campbell OBE, a Congregational church minister and chairman of the Congregational Union of Australia and New Zealand from 1937 until 1939. They had a daughter and three sons.
Harold was educated at Newington College commencing in 1904.
Hector was educated at Newington College commencing in 1904. He graduated MB ChM from the University of Sydney in 1916. He was a medical officer serving during WWI from 1917 until January 1919. He married Florence Henderson in Aberdeen.
On his death in a motor vehicle accident in Stroud, New South Wales, Beale was survived by his second wife and ten of his 12 children.