Australia Death Index, 1787-1985
Death Place: Berr, Victoria
Age: 60
Father's Name: William
Mother's name: Sarah Munro
Registration Year: 1955
Registration Place: Victoria
Registration Number: 21297
Estimated birth year: abt 1895
Name: Stanley Alfred Douglas
Birth Date: 29 Nov 1916
Date of Registration: Dec 2006
Age at Death: 90
Registration district: Oxfordshire
Volume: -1
Page: -1
Register Number: E02D
District and Subdistrict: 695/1E
Entry Number: 196
Name Timothy J Drake
Event Type Birth Registration
Registration Quarter Apr-May-Jun
Registration Year 1955
Registration District Weymouth
Mother's Maiden Name Forbes-Robertson
Volume 6A Page 817 Line Number 82
Name: BILLSON, Ethel L
Registration District: Lambeth
County: London
Year of Registration: 1967
Quarter of Registration: Jul-Aug-Sep
Age at death: 89
Volume No: 5D
Page No: 4
First name(s) ANNE M
Last name EMERY
Birth year 1958
Birth quarter 1
Mother's last name BERRY
District READING
County Berkshire
Country England
Volume 6A
Page 220
Not Proven
Registration District: South Glamorgan
County: Glamorganshire
Year of Registration: 1995
Month of Registration: November
Date of Birth: 30 May 1938
District No: 8901B
Reg No: B29A
Ent No: 072
DOR: 1195
Name: Dorothy Florence Finch
Birth Date: 4 May 1888
Date of Registration: Jun 1977
Age at Death: 89
Registration district: Bexley
Inferred County: Greater London
Volume: 11
Page: 0474
Registration District: Bournemouth
County: Dorset
Year of Registration: 1987
Month of Registration: March
Date of Birth: 9 March 1902
Volume No: 23
Page No: 294
Reg No: 387
Ann was educated in Switzerland. As a result of being able to speak fluent German, in 1939 she got a job in Berlin with the War Office. She was on the last train out of Berlin at the outbreak of war.
Our mother, who was born in Manchester in 1920, was schooled in Belgium and Switzerland. Her parents divorced when she was only four and her mother, a successful actor's agent, had the means and sufficient lack of interest in her six year -old daughter, to wave her off on the Victoria Station/Ostend boat train (a farewell kiss would have been an emotional exaggeration!)
She had been to two boarding schools in England before going to Belgium but she wasn't prepared for a 'total immersion' in French -she was only allowed to speak English on Thursdays. She never took to the gruelling school life in the outbacks of Antwerp and finally managed to persuade her mother, who she saw mercifully little of, to have her moved to St Gallen in Switzerland: There, after having spent seven years speaking French, she was thrown into a Swiss German environment - and adored it. Rigorous morning classes were followed by skiing in winter and long mountain hikes in spring and autumn. Her close friend at the time, Maribel Maranon, daughter of a well known Spanish doctor, had to return suddenly to Madrid at the outbreak of the Spanish civil war.
Ann's command of German was such that she had no difficulty in finding work in Berlin once she left school. She worked in the passport office in The British Embassy until the outbreak of war and acquired a great collection of Jazz 78r.p.m's; exchanging coffee, received via diplomatic circles, for early Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller, Paul Robeson, etc, records - lots of people were only too happy to get rid of 'black' music during the Nazi era, in exchange for a beverage which had become very scarce. Her eclectic musical tastes found her in the Berlin Concert Hall where, on two occasions she almost rubbed shoulders with 'an insignificant dwarf of a man whose clothes, like his ideas, were too big for him' -Adolf Hitler.
Her boss at the B.E. was an affable, middle-aged gentleman by the name of Frank Foley who, she then thought, spoke and understood little, if any, German. Great was her surprise when she learnt, less than ten years ago, that not only had her charming boss been virtually bi-lingual but he had also been responsible for saving countless Jews. (see:- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Foley )
After the war and once her three children were in their teens, she started working with a charming and dynamic couple who had recently set up the International House Language School in Shaftesbury Avenue -a stone's throw from Piccadilly Circus. A long and fruitful working and social relationship ensued with John and Brita Haycraft during which time Ann ran the accommodation agency for the students and started up her own summer courses for foreign school children in various centres throughout Britain.
In recent years, having moved from London to Shoreham on the coast of West Sussex, Ann had the good fortune to have various 'Guardian Angels' as neighbours, especially her son-in-Iaw's brother and his wife. She wasn't always the easiest person to get on with; she could be autocratic and domineering at times and loved nothing better than a good political discussion (often argument!) Like our father, George, she was a staunch socialist.
Ann was armed with a ready, and often wicked, wit: - on answering the phone to a double glazing salesman for the third time in the same week, anxious to sell her his wares, she said that she would consult her husband who had died 25 years before, but still gave her good advice - she never heard another word!
She will be missed by those 8 grandchildren and 8 great grandchildren who she had more empathy with than her own mother had ever had with her and, of course, by her two children.
The Tate Gallery owns a painting by Eric: "In the Forest, Pont-Aven" 1895
Oil on canvas T01825 Purchased 1973
http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/forbes-robertson-in-the-forest-pont-aven-t01825/text-catalogue-entry
Ian FF Robertson of Lower Bourne, Farnham, Surrey died 11th Jan 1936.
Probate granted 21st Feb 1936 to Beatrice Forbes Robertson Hale (single woman) Effects - £7055 12s 5d
First name(s) IDA
Last name FORBES-ROBERTSON
Birth day 9
Birth month 2
Birth year 1902
Death quarter 4
Death year 1991
District WESTMINSTER
Register number 1191
County London
Volume 15
Page 1919
On 11/12 April 1918 near Vieux Berquin, France, four times Lieutenant Colonel Forbes-Robertson saved the line from breaking and averted a most serious situation. On one occasion, having made a reconnaissance on horseback in full view of the enemy under heavy fire, he led a counter-attack which was completely successful in establishing our line. When his horse was shot under him he continued on foot, steadying the men and inspiring confidence by his disregard for personal danger. On the second day he lost another horse and again continued on foot until he had established a line to which his own troops could withdraw.
First name(s) JOHN
Last name FORBES-ROBERTSON
Birth year 1928
Birth quarter 3
Registration month -
Mother's last name THORNTON
District EAST PRESTON
County Sussex
Country England
Volume 2B
Page 459
FORBES-ROBERTSON, JOHNSTON, English actor, was the son of John Forbes-Robertson of Aberdeen, an art critic. He was educated at Charterhouse, and studied at the Royal Academy schools with a view to becoming a painter. But though he kept up his interest in that art, in 1874 he turned to the theatre, making his first appearance in London as Chastelard, in Mary, Queen of Scots. He studied under Samuel Phelps, from whom he learnt the traditions of the tragic stage. He played with the Bancrofts and with John Hare, supported Miss Mary Anderson in both England and America, and also acted at different times with Sir Henry Irving. His refined and artistic style, and beautiful voice and elocution made him a marked man on the English stage, and in Pinero's The Profligate at the Garrick theatre (1889), under Hare's management, he established his position as one of the most individual of London actors. In 1895 he started under his own management at the Lyceum with Mrs Patrick Campbell, producing Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Macbeth and also some modern plays; his impersonation as Hamlet was especially fine, and his capacity as a romantic actor was shown to great advantage also in John Davidson's For the Crown and in Maeterlinck's Pellias and Mélisande. In 1900 he married the actress Gertrude Elliott, with whom, as his leading lady, he appeared at various theatres, producing in subsequent years The Light that Failed, Madeleine Lucette Riley's Mice and Men, and G. Bernard Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra, Jerome K. Jerome's Passing of the Third Floor Back, &c. His brothers, Ian Robertson (b. 1858) and Norman Forbes (b. 1859), had also been well-known actors from about 1878 onwards.
