Doris Stocker

Doris Mary Stocker (Lady Segrave) (1886 – 16 December 1968) was a British actress and singer, especially in Edwardian musical comedy.

Doris Stocker in 1906

Early life and career

She was born in Bombay in India in 1886, the second of three children of George Stocker (1857–1929), an engineer, and Mary Dunn née Johnston (1862–1946). While her father remained in India for work her mother returned to England with the children where they lived in London from at least 1891 to 1911.[1] Her older sister Blanche Stocker was also a stage actress and singer.

Stocker began her career as a chorus girl under George Edwardes at the Gaiety Theatre in London and soon played roles in West End theatres: Grace Hufnagle in Captain Kidd at Wyndham's Theatre (1904);[2] Angy Loftus in The Cingalee at Daly's Theatre (1904); Pepzi in A Waltz Dream at Daly's (1911); Lady Diana Camden in Theodore & Co at the Gaiety (1912);[2] Gipsy Dancer in Gipsy Love at Daly's (1912);[3] and the Honorable Baby Vereker in To-Night's the Night at the Shubert Theatre in New York (1914),[4] repeating the role in London at the Gaiety (1915).[5]

War, marriage and death

In 1915 at the height of World War I she accompanied Sylvia Brett and Charles Vyner Brooke, whom she hardly knew, on a Japanese steamer to Sarawak, Malaysia, to visit Charles Brooke, the Rajah of Sarawak.[6]

At Marylebone, London, on 4 October 1917 she married Sir Henry O'Neal De Hane Segrave (1896–1930), then serving in the war as a Captain in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment and the Royal Flying Corps.[7] After her marriage she retired from the stage.

Stocker died in Kensington, London, in 1968, leaving £76,135 in her will.[8]

References
  1. 1911 England Census for Blanche Stocker: London, St Andrew Holborn above the Bars and St George the Martyr, Ancestry.com (subscription required)
  2. J. P. Wearing, The London Stage 1910–1919: A Calendar of Productions, Performers, and Personnel, Rowman & Littlefield (2014), Google Books
  3. "A Gypsy in Mufti", The Bystander, 18 September 1912
  4. Gypsy O'Brien as Alice, Doris Stocker as Honorable Baby Vereker and Adrah Fair as Yvette la Plage in To-Night's the Night, Collection of the Museum of the City of New York
  5. Doris Stocker in To-Night's the Night (1914), Internet Broadway Database
  6. Philip Eade, Sylvia, Queen of the Headhunters: An Outrageous Englishwoman and Her Lost Kingdom, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (2007), Google Books
  7. London, England, Church of England Marriages and Banns, 1754–1932 for Doris Mary Stocker: Westminster, Saint Cyprian, Saint Marylebone, 1903-1923, Ancestry.com (subscription required)
  8. England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1858–1995 for Doris Mary Segrave: 1969, Ancestry.com (subscription required)
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