 Within a month of returning from their honeymoon Isabella was pregnant . A few weeks before the birth , Samuel persuaded his wife to contribute to The Englishwoman 's Domestic Magazine , a publication that the food writers Mary <unk> and Olive <unk> consider was " designed to make women content with their lot inside the home , not to interest them in the world outside " . The magazine was affordable , aimed at young middle class women and was commercially successful , selling 50 @,@ 000 issues a month by 1856 . Isabella began by translating French fiction for publication as stories or serials . Shortly afterwards she started to work on the cookery column — which had been <unk> for the previous six months following the departure of the previous correspondent — and the household article . The Beetons ' son , Samuel Orchart , was born towards the end of May 1857 , but died at the end of August that year . On the death certificate , the cause of death was given as <unk> and cholera , although Hughes <unk> that Samuel senior had unknowingly contracted syphilis in a premarital liaison with a prostitute , and had unwittingly passed the condition on to his wife , which would have infected his son . 
