Alfred Chester Beatty

Sir Alfred Chester Beatty (7 February 1875 – 19 January 1968)Seanad 1985: "Chester Beatty died at the Princess Grace Clinic, Monte Carlo, on 19 January 1968, [...]" (some sources give this as 20 January). was an American-British mining magnate and philanthropist. A successful businessman, Beatty was given the epithet "the King of Copper" in reference to his fortune. He became a naturalised British citizen in 1933, was knighted in 1954 and was made an honorary citizen of Ireland in 1957. He collected African, Asian, European and Middle Eastern manuscripts, rare printed books, prints and objets d'art. After moving to Dublin in 1950, he established the Chester Beatty Library on Shrewsbury Road to house his collection; it opened to the public in 1954. The collections were bequeathed to the Irish people and entrusted to the care of the state in his Irish will. He donated several papyrus documents to the British Museum, his second wife's (Edith Dunn Beatty) collection of Marie Antoinette's personal furniture to the Louvre and a number of his personal paintings that once hung in the picture gallery of his London home to the National Gallery of Ireland. He also made possible the expansion and relocation of the Cancer Research Institute, which was renamed the Chester Beatty Institute, and later renamed the Institute of Cancer Research, in 1939. Early life A. Chester Beatty, known to friends and family as Chester or "Chet", was born into a middle-class New York family in 1875 on the site of what is now Rockefeller Center, the youngest of three sons, Chester, Robert and Gedney. He was born to Hetty and John Beatty, a banker and stockbroker. He graduated from Columbia School of Mines in 1898 and bought a one-way train ticket to Denver, Colorado. His first job in the mines earned him $2 per day as a "mucker", clearing away rock and soil from mine tunnels. He was quickly promoted to supervisor of the Kektonga Silver Mine.