Description:Beaumont Albright was born on 21 August 1861 at the family home in Edgbaston. He was the youngest of eight children of Quakers Arthur Albright and his wife Rachel. Arthur was one of the co-founders of the chemical firm Albright and Wilson. Beaumont was a delicate baby and a sickly child. In 1873 he was sent to a boarding school called Northfields in Stroud. It was run by a Quaker teacher, Mrs Eliza Gilkes.
To begin with twelve year old Beaumont was homesick and in the first letter here he is very unhappy. He was suffering from neuralgia and an eye infection, and had fallen out of bed hurting his arm. In other letters from the same period he begged his mother to come and take him away, and to let him go to a day school so that he could come home every evening.
In time he settled down and made friends. He learnt Latin, French, German, history, geography, ‘sums’, poetry and spelling. In his spare time he played cricket and football, rode his bicycle, kept rabbits and pigeons, and grew vegetables. He also enjoyed woodwork and made himself a toy boat and a ‘house’ for his pigeons.