Carolyn Ruth Beecroft, 1956

Description

Comments (1)

Creator

Marjorie Ruddy, Photographer

Media Type

Image

Item Type

Negatives

Description

A black and white negative of one of Julian Beecroft's children. She is standing in front of the Beecroft residence known as the Grange. We believe the photograph to be of Norma Beecroft.

Notes

Julian Balfour Beecroft was born at Toronto on 19 March 1908. He came to Whitby in 1918 as a student.

Beecroft was an accomplished pianist who was invited to play with George Gershwin in New York when he lost three fingers in a woodworking accident.

He was an inventor for the remainder of his life, building boats, photography equipment, furniture, and metal forging machinery. He invited the first wire and tape voice recorders but failed the patent them.

In 1947, he set up a machine shop at his home on Mary St. E. There, he patented a hydraulic control system for the Avro Arrow Interceptor and many other inventions.

In 1978, he moved to Port Hope and again to Sharbot Lake in 1984. Beecroft died at Perth on 20 January 2008 and is buried at Union Cemetery, Port Hope.

This house was located on the north-east corner of Mary and Pine Streets (at 201 Pine Street). It was built in the 1850s and demolished in 1976. Owners of this house were the Armstrong family, W.H. Higgins, C.F. Stewart, J.B. Laidlaw, and Frank Lloyd Beecroft. The home was called "The Grange." Frank Lloyd Beecroft was a Whitby Lumber dealer who lived in the Grange from 1918 until his death in 1963. His son, Julian Beecroft lived in the house until it was demolished.

Marjorie Georgina Ruddy (1908-1980) was a prominent Whitby photographer and the only commercial photographer in Whitby during the 1930s and 1940s. Marjorie was the official photographer for the Whitby Police Department starting in the 1930s and as a result took many photographs of car accidents, fingerprints and crime scenes. (Station Gallery. Whitby Through the Lens Photographs by Marjorie G. Ruddy, 1935-1948. Whitby: Station Gallery, 2010.)

Date of Original