Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Beecham, Thomas
BEECHAM, THOMAS (1820–1907), patent medicine vendor, was born at Witney, Oxfordshire, on 3 Dec. 1820, being the son of Joseph and Mary Beecham. About 1845 he opened a chemist's shop in Wigan, South Lancashire, and there invented a formula for pills, his first patentmedicine licence being dated Liverpool, 8 July 1847. In 1846 he married. In 1859 he removed his business, still quite small, to the then new township of St. Helens, half-way between Wigan and Liverpool. At St. Helens he picked up, from the chance remark of a lady who purchased his pills, the phrase ‘worth a guinea a box,’ which he made the advertising motto of his concern. In 1866 his elder son, Joseph, joined the business, and infused into it a highly enterprising spirit. In 1885 the present head-factory and office-buildings in Westfield Street, St. Helens, were built at an initial cost of 30,000l. Joseph Beecham then visited the United States, and established a factory in New York, since followed by factories and agencies in several other countries. In 1887 the father bought an estate, Mursley Hall, near Winslow, Buckinghamshire, where he farmed till 1893. In 1895 he retired from active work in favour of his son Joseph. After an extended tour in the United States he built a house, Wychwood, Northwood Avenue, Southport, Lancashire, where he died on 6 April 1907, leaving a large personal fortune, and his share in an immense business. In South Lancashire he was well known as an eccentric public benefactor. By religion he was a congregationalist. Besides his son Joseph (b. 1848), mayor of St. Helens in 1889–99 and 1910–12, who was knighted in 1912, he had a second son, William Eardley Beecham (b. 1855), a doctor practising in London.
[The Times, 8 April and 5 June (will), 1907; Chemist and Druggist, 13 April 1907; private information.]