Her father was a solicitor and she came to notice after she moved to the Hebridean isle of Lewis and Harris with her husband, Frederick William Leopold Thomas, who was Captain in the Royal Navy.
[1] She worked with the landowner Catherine Murray, Countess of Dunmore to create the business of weaving Harris Tweed.
Beckett moved to London in 1888 and the "Scottish Home Industries" which managed the new product, became a limited company in 1896.
[1] In addition to her assistance to textile workers on the isle of Harris and Tweed she was also involved in several initiatives to improve the lot of the people there.
Even after she remarried and moved to London she paid for a cottage to be built for a nurse at Manish and sent an endowment.