Daniel Beale

Daniel Beale (1759–1842) was a Scottish merchant and fur trader active in the Far East mercantile centres of Bombay, Canton and Macau as well as at one time the Prussian consul in China. Biography Daniel Beale was the purser of, successively, the East India Company ships Walpole and General Coote on voyages between London and Canton in 1783-1786: in 1783 he joined the Macao partnership of John Henry Cox and John Reid in their mercantile ventures. Giving evidence before the British parliament's commons committee of Enquiry on the East India Company’s Affairs on 11 May 1815, Beale testified that he had been resident in Canton "from the latter end of 1787 to the middle of 1797" and acted as "agent for many of the mercantile houses in Bombay and Bengal." John Henry Cox had been sent to Canton in 1782 by his father James to sell off an accumulated stock of clocks, watches and mechanical toys known in Pidgin English as "singsongs", which were popular with the Chinese. Along with James Fox, the other major manufacturer of singsongs was Francis Magniac of Clerkenwell, London, whose sons Charles and Hollingworth would later become partners of Beale. Merchants operating in the Far East at this time formed a bewildering array of partnerships. As well as the Coxes, Beale was also at various times a partner of John Reid, Charles Magniac and his brother Hollingworth, as well as Alexander Shank and Robert Hamilton.