Obtaining a Decent Bit of Lingerie in Old Shanghai #1 – Go See Beeson on Nanyang

I know you’ve always wondered just where to get a fine item of lingerie in Shanghai? Beeson’s was certainly one possible solution. They were down on Nanyang Road (interestingly, one of the few roads that kept its pre-1949 name) behind the Bubbling Well Road. Fittingly there are still a few small clothing stores and tailoring businesses along that street as well as some bars. Beeson’s was a ground floor retail unit with apartments above. The company was run by Horace Beeson, an American (from Media, the county seat of Delaware County, Pennsylvania) and started, I think, in the mid-1920s. Horace had previously worked in the early 1920s for Gaston, Williams and Wigmore in Shanghai – a Canadian company that sold cars, motorcycles and even ship, I think, around the world. He’d also worked for Elbrook’s, American importers, engineers and exporters based on the Kiangse Road (Kiangxi Road). Obviously at some point lingerie (understandably) appealed a little more to Horace than piston engines.

This advert is from 1930 bit I think the company had some problems and shut down around 1933 being taken over by the Sheppard Import Company.

The Beeson family had quite a relationship with Shanghai. Horace briefly involved his nephew Price Beeson in the business (see the article on him below) and his brother (and obviously also a nephew of Horace’s), T. Frank Beeson, who worked for the silk mill that supplied Beeson’s. Price and T. Frank seem to have left Shanghai around the time of the troubles with Japan in 1932.