The oddest Cartesian of them all.

 

How did I get into this one?

I am used to performers, and especially Cartesians, telling lies about themselves. Their names, their ages ... but this one takes the biscuit. 

The archive says: "Sophie Madeline Lacy was a chorister with D'Oyly Carte Opera Company "D" in the autumn of 1890, when she toured with her husband Edward Bishop. She continued to perform with the Carte organization for the next several years before leaving the stage due to ill health in early 1895".

The first sentence is quite true. Name more or less accurate, But no dates of birth and death, and no clarification of ...

Magdeline Sophia Lacy was a daughter of builder and contractor Robert Linton Lacy and his wife Isabella Maria née Waite. Yes, she was. Born in Chelsea 9 February 1866. Yes, she was. But in later life she denied that. Not the 9 February, but the 1866. She chopped nearly twenty years off her age in the 1939 census, and fooled the death registrar when she died in 1954. 'Aged 76'.  And some ...

But, then, Miss Lacy fooled a few folk in her time. And told many a lie.

I don't know whether she had worked as a vocalist before joining the company, but she lighted on E L D Bishop and married him in 1891 ...

I've blogged poor Teddy.

"Edward Louis Desiré BISHOP (b Marlborough, Wilts x 18 November 1868; d at sea 26 December 1902). The 6ft 3ins Mr Bishop was the son of John Bishop, a customs officer, and his wife Louisa Rosabella née O'Dwyer from Ripon. They moved to Southampton, then to Millbrook ... and apparently he was a member of the Carte chorus from 1890. Anyway, he is on the 1894 paylist. I spot him rarely: at King Edward VI Grammar School, Southampton in 1882-5 (fifth form, second prize mathematics, chemistry, electricity, magnetism .. Cambridge Entrance) ... I don't know when he dumped a savant chemical career in favour of one as a chorusboy, but hereafter I see him mainly in Cartesian cricket teams in the 90s, and, in 1899, as 'Cancan a citizen' in The Lucky Star. However, he did make the faits divers columns when his wife, née Sophie Madeleine Lacy, a Cartesian chorister, sued him, in 1899, for non payment of maintenance. Which was a bit cheeky, because she was the one who was wandering. He'd merely been walked out on (1896). He promptly divorced her (1901) and revealed the name of her paramour, Mr James Yorke Scarlett Rae (1871-1911) of the Edinburgh amdrams. Who had three legitimate children at home. I see Teddy with the company in Bury in 1901, but after that?. And her. And their two children, Charles [Linton] Leslie (b 7 December 1893) and Dorothy [Dora] (?Mrs Pepper, b 23 March 1895; d Chatham 1980). Oh. Died at sea, on the Doune Castle, at 36.30N and 12.24W, heart attack, Edward Bishop, actor aged 34 ... "

She didn't leave the Carte and husband through ill-health. She left to bear her second child ...

Anyway, at the time of the divorce, Mrs Bishop was already elsewhere pregnant. By whom? The married Mr Rae? Or by George Philip Clements (clerk)? Well, the child was born 3 September 1901 as Phyllis Barbara Clements. And Mrs Bishop did get round to marrying Mr Clements a couple of years later. After Teddy's death. And a son was born ...  Philip Gerald (7 February 1904).

The two Bishop children were abandoned to a foster family in Fulham and then largely disappear from my ken. Phyllis stayed with mother, who lived latterly at 15 Stone Street, Brighton, and died 22 February 1990. Philip 'a soldier' got into trouble with the law at 21 (as aka Philip Bishop!), married, fathered a son, and died aged 74 at Cuckfield in 1978. 

There's nowt so queer as folks.