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Docker Family

Dennis Williams

Gone but not forgotten
OK, pin back your lugoles...another lengthy story of everyday Brummie Folk....Meet The Dockers…….one of Birmingham’s most important Industrial families…and with one particular addition by marriage; certainly one of the most infamous…..
Their story is quite long and complex, and there is inevitably a certain amount of repetition, for which I apologise in advance…so let’s start with the most amazingly talented, but sadly perhaps, the least well known one…the Godfather….the business genius that was….


Frank Dudley Docker

Frank Dudley Docker (26 August 1862 - 8 July 1944) was born at Paxton House, Smethwick, Staffordshire, the son of Ralph Docker, a solicitor in practice at Birmingham and Smethwick who took on a large number of public appointments, and his wife Sarah Sankey. Although Frank was his first name, he much preferred Dudley from the off…


Paxton House, Smethwick

He went King Edward's School, Birmingham but appears to have resisted formal schooling and left early. He was equally discontented when he went into his father's office to study law. In 1881 he left his father's firm and went into the varnish business with his brother William. Known as the Docker Brothers, and it is still a thriving business now in west Bromwich, but originally from under a couple of arches in Deritend ….and for the REALLY keen, their whole paint and varnish making process is captured beautifully in this 30 minute silent, but deadly, You tube clip… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eD_QPIgWeE0
Gives substance to the 'watching paint dry' aphorism...






In 1895, Dudley Docker married Lucy Constance Hebbert at St Augustine’s Church in Edgbaston. After their marriage, Dudley and Lucy set up home in Rotton Park Lodge, in Rotton Park Road Their only child was Bernard Dudley Frank Docker, who succeeded his father in his business enterprises, and he and a subsequent wife, form the basis of Chapter 2….

As well as the paint firm, Dudley Docker later acquired a railway rolling stock company; and at the same time, through his close involvement (from 1906 as a director) with British Small Arms (BSA), Docker initiated an interest in firearms, cars (briefly), cycles and motor-cycles - for which the BSA name became legendary.




As deputy chairman in 1909-12, he masterminded BSA's purchase of Daimler Motors in 1910; and from 1906-9 BSA were guaranteed a quarter of all government orders for Lee Enfield rifles; in 1911-13 up to 33% of all BSA's business was in arms. So, quite a good start then…..

Docker, however, very much the Birmingham industrial magnate, but also a character of unique vision, had ideas for a more considerable expansion. In fact even before the war his efforts and intrigues were largely directed to matching, overtaking and supplanting German industrial power. In April 1902 he formed a massive conglomerate, the Metropolitan Amalgamated Railway Carriage and Wagon Company, a merger of five rival companies, latterly the Metropolitan Carriage, Wagon and Finance Company (MCWF), to which others were then added.
 
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PART 2

By 1911-4 Metro Cammell employed some 14,000 people and occupied 475 acres of factory space. Dudley Docker's MCWF emerged as one of the UK's key manufacturers of guns, armoured vehicles and finally tanks for the First World War effort. He was first chairman of the Birmingham Munitions Output Organization in 1915, and his rolling-stock company was the chief manufacturer of numerous tanks in the First World War.




When King George V visited Birmingham in July 1915 he toured the Saltley Works and lunched there with Docker and his co-directors. MCWF (as Docker's biographer points out) were originally selected to build some of the prototype landships which became known as tanks, though the first were actually constructed by a Lincolnshire firm dealing in agriculture machinery.




In 1916 MCWF resumed responsibility for spearheading tank production. Latterly Metropolitan was contracted as builder of all 400 of the initial Mark V's and 700 of the more advanced Mark V's during 1918, and ultimately made some 80 percent of all tanks deployed by the British during the war.

The striking picture below relates to a visit in 1923 by HRH the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VIII) to the factory at Small Heath, Birmingham, which was the epicentre of Dudley Docker's feverish engineering activity.




In the picture, Dudley Docker is second from left, next to the mayor and (presumably) lady mayoress; to their right is H. R. H. the Prince of Wales, looking perhaps not over-enthralled at this celebration of Midland engineering genius.

Docker's stance in the picture is typical: alert, jovial, the face of a lively conspirator. Ironically it was in 1916, when he was at the very height of his power and influence, and when Shackleton and his lost Endurance expedition, which Docker had handsomely sponsored, returned safely, that Dudley Docker suffered most dramatically from the almost Churchillian gloom and despondency which occasionally seriously affected him.

Such was the Small Heath conglomerate's contribution to the war effort, and such was Dudley Docker's personal significance at the hub of British industry, that Winston Churchill himself visited the factory towards the end of the war: 'Would you care to come to Birmingham with me,' he asked his wife Clementine, 'and see tanks and munition workers...and Mr. Dudley Docker?' Churchill enjoyed the hospitality of Docker's comfortable home at Kenilworth, near Coventry. Relations remained cordial, for in 1919 Docker gave a dinner at the Grosvenor Hotel in honour of Churchill's achievements while Minister of Munitions, and presented him with a silver model of a tank.

In subsequent decades Docker held directorships of the Midland Bank, and of four major railway companies in the Midlands, London and the South East.

In 1918 his machinations were behind the formation of Wagon Repairs, Ltd., another successful conglomerate, dedicated, 'in the UK or elsewhere, to repairing, rebuilding, reconstruction, painting, altering, converting, equipping, adapting, making fit for traffic, supplying and dealing with railway and other wagons, trucks, corves, carriages, trolleys, trolleys, vans and vehicles, and repairing wheels, axles and components.'

In 1921 he formed the Electric and Railway Finance Corporation. Famed as a 'fixer' putting together mergers and business deals, Docker was a founder of the Midlands Employers Federation in 1913, and in 1914 bought a London evening newspaper, The Globe, to agitate for greater influence of industrialists in government policy towards business.

He was founder President in 1916 of the Federation of British Industries, which he intended to act as a ‘business parliament’, supplanting the responsibilities of the Westminster parliament in commercial, fiscal, and labour matters; indeed as a master of persuasion, Dudley Docker's unique energies were largely responsible for the subsequent creation of the future Confederation of British Industry, the CBI. Not bad a bad portfolio for a Brummie…but these wren’t his only skills…

In the 1880s Docker played several games of county cricket for Midland counties. He served on the committee of newly founded Warwickshire County Cricket Club until 1892, having been the highest scoring batsman at the inaugural match of the Edgbaston ground in June 1886 (when he was voted man of the match); he also playing for his county against Australia the same summer, and against the 'Gentlemen of Canada' the following year. On a personal note I wellremember playing cricket at Edgbaston for the school in the final of the Docker Shield....on the opposing (and winning) side was Dennis Amiss.....




He was a keen shot, and usually spent time in Scotland each year, where he enjoyed fast walking on the moors, and was a member of the Royal Thames Yacht Squadron.

He was made a Commander of the Bath in 1911, largely because of his energies in recruiting troops (many of them from the Saltley Works) for the Territorial Army. In 1929 he was offered a Barony; but regrettably the offer was withdrawn by the government due to resentment in the city, partly because of his role in the purchase by the International General Electric Company of a major interest in Metropolitan-Vickers Electrical Company, which attracted much criticism from some of his colleagues.

Docker's perceptive biographer, Richard Davenport-Hines, to whom much of this article is indebted

'He was tall and well built, with a big nose. As a young man he seemed jovial and frank, although he could be intimidating: his small, intense, unblinking eyes quelled dissidence. He was always mercenary, and had an unbeatable understanding of other mercenary men. He disliked others being in authority over him, and resented politicians or officials whom he could not bribe or browbeat.

'In business he was always bold, flexible, persuasive, ruthless, and opportunistic; from 1918 onwards he might be judged unscrupulous. At committee meetings Docker was taciturn and even inarticulate, but he was so shrewd and calculating that he was often able to direct deliberations by informal pressure. Increasingly he liked to operate through nominees, and was usually a good delegator. He had a retentive memory, and an acuity in financial affairs that was hard to surpass.

'The least gullible of men, some of his political enthusiasms were nevertheless unrealistic. Apparently he suffered from nervous strains which made him increasingly pessimistic and aggressive; he may have developed claustrophobia, and about 1916 came to dislike crowded meetings or public attention. Latterly he was secretive.'

Just to finish off, an Irish racehorse, a bay gelding owned by a Mr. Joshua Pearce, bears the name 'Dudley Docker'; and at the University of Birmingham a number of Dudley Docker research scholarships in Engineering and Engineering Science are awarded regularly.

Dudley Docker and his family moved from Edgbaston to the Gables, Kenilworth at the beginning of the 20th century and in 1935 moved to Coleshill House, Amersham, Buckinghamshire, where Docker died of angina and tonsillitis in July 1944.

What a life, what an entrepreneur….!

Cue his son Bernard taking over…."There be Dragons.."
 
PART 3
The collapse of the Docker Empire and ‘good name’.……where did it all go wrong?

Well it was all down to the flamboyant lifestyles of his progeny, and his choice of second spouse…
Firstly, Sir Bernard Dudley Frank Docker (9 August 1896 – 22 May 1978) was born in Edgbaston, Birmingham, the only child of Dudley and Lucy.
Briefly, born into this VERY wealthy family, after the death of his father, Bernard Docker became the managing director of the Birmingham Small Arms Company group of companies (BSA) from the early 1940s until 1956, and he also chaired The Daimler Company Limited, and the money rolled in….
Docker's first wife was Jeanne Stuart (née Ivy Sweet), a British actress. They married in 1933 but the marriage was soon dissolved after pressure from Docker's parents, who ‘disapproved’... But then, to make a bad situation worse, enter the Dragon..or rather the Dragoness…

Norah Docker, Lady Docker (born Norah Royce Turner, 1905–1983) was an English socialite. A dance hostess at a club in her youth, she married three times, on each occasion to an executive of a business that sold luxury goods. Her third marriage, to Sir Bernard, was notable for the couple's excessive behaviour, to say the very least!

Lady Docker was born in Derby to Sydney Turner and his wife Amy. The Turners moved to Birmingham where her father bought into a car dealership. Her father committed suicide when she was 16, after which she had to earn her own living. As a young woman she became a dance hostess at London's Café de Paris. Her protectors included the 9th Duke of Marlborough and, for many years, Clement Callingham, head of Henekeys wine and spirit merchants. She had an affair with Callingham, which resulted in an abortion, her being named in a divorce action by Callingham's wife, and her marriage to the divorced Callingham.

All in all, Norah Royce Turner was married three times: the first, to Clement Callingham from 1938 to his death in 1945, resulted in one son, Lance. The second, in 1946, to Sir William Collins, the president of Fortnum & Mason, which lasted until his death in 1948. The third, in 1949, was to Sir Bernard Docker, chairman of Birmingham Small Arms, Daimler, and by then a director of the Midland Bank, Anglo-Argentine Tramways and Thomas Cook and Son. Lots of cash to play with….






However, the Dockers were often objects of ridicule because of the ostentatious flaunting of their wealth. Put simply, Lady Docker loved publicity and was often in public view via extravagant stunts and wild behaviour, enthusiastically gobbled up and fanfared by the Media.
For instance, in the summer of 1954, after a visit to a coal mine, she invited several of the miners to a champagne party on the Dockers' yacht Shemara, at which she danced the hornpipe.
She also won a marbles championship in 1955 at Castleford's "Reight Neet Aht", a charity event for the Cancer Relief Fund, while wearing a sequin dress and diamonds. The match was rigged, the other players having been instructed to let her win. The next year, while in Melbourne, Australia to watch the 1956 Summer Olympics, she challenged the whole suburb of Collingwood to a marbles match. It is not recorded if her challenge was accepted…but I doubt it somehow..

Then there were the cars. As a further ostentatious flaunting of wealth, Sir Bernard Docker commissioned a series of Daimlers built to Lady Docker's specifications for the show circuit. And boy were they showy.
1951 – The Gold Car (a.k.a. Golden Daimler)
The Gold Car was a touring limousine on the Thirty-Six Straight-Eight chassis. The car was covered with 7,000 tiny gold stars, and all plating that would normally have been chrome was gold. This car was taken to Paris, the United States and Australia




1952 – Blue Clover
Also on the Thirty-Six Straight-Eight chassis, Blue Clover was a two-door sportsman's coupé
1953 – Silver Flash
The Silver Flash was an aluminium-bodied coupé based on the 3-litre Regency chassis. Its accessories included solid silver hairbrushes and red fitted luggage made from crocodile skin.[10]
1954 – Star Dust
based on the DF400 chassis
1955 – Golden Zebra
The Golden Zebra was a two-door coupé based on the DK400 chassis. Like the Gold Car, the Golden Zebra had all its metal trim pieces plated gold instead of chrome, beyond that, it had an ivory dashboard and zebra-skin upholstery. Lady Docker said: "Because mink is too hot to sit on."
Alongside the show cars kept for her personal use, Docker also commissioned Hooper & Co. to build a drophead coupé on a Daimler DE-36 chassis for display at the first post-war British International Motor Show at the Earls Court Exhibition Centre in 1948. Named the "Green Goddess" by the press, the car had five seats, three windshield wipers, and hydraulic operation of both the hood and the hood cover. After the show, the car was further tested and refined, after which it was kept by Docker, also for his personal use.




Six other chassis were bodied with similar bodies. These were all called "Green Goddesses" after the original, which was exhibited with jade-green coachwork and green-piped beige leather.
 
Cont...

By this time, most of his business associates had tired of this pair’s public antics, and in January 1953 the chairman of Midland Bank asked Sir Bernard for his resignation from the board of directors. Docker, who had been a director of Midland Bank since 1928, refused to resign. The board of Midland Bank notified its shareholders that they were to be asked to remove Sir Bernard from the board at the annual general meeting being held that February. The chairman stated that it was not in the bank's best interest to be associated with the publicity surrounding Sir Bernard. Sir Bernard replied to the shareholders that the publicity stemmed from three court proceedings, all of which had been either settled or found in his favour.

In late January, Sir Bernard resigned from the board of Midland Bank with immediate effect, claiming there was a rumour of an impending charge for a currency offence.
Then, at the end of May 1956, Bernard Docker was removed from the board of Birmingham Small Arms Company (BSA), and was replaced as chairman of BSA by Jack Sangster. The company, which owned the Docker Daimlers, had the Dockers return them.
The issues leading to the removal of the Dockers stemmed from the extravagant expenses they presented to the company, including the show cars made available for Lady Docker's personal use, a £5,000 gold and mink ensemble that Lady Docker wore at the 1956 Paris Motor Show that she tried to write off as a business expense as she "was only acting as a model" at the show, and Glandyfi Castle, bought with £12,500 of BSA's money and refurbished for £25,000, again with company money.




Then there was the Feud with Monaco. Up until 1958, the Dockers often went to Monaco, where, in September 1952, they were banned from the Monte Carlo Casino after Lady Docker slapped a waiter in the face.
The Dockers were invited to the christening of Prince Albert in April 1958. They brought Lady Docker's son, Lance Callingham, with them, but he was not allowed to attend. Later, at the Hôtel de Paris, Lady Docker, still furious about the incident, tore up a paper Monacan flag that had been at her table. In response, the government of Monaco had her expelled and the Royal Family of Monaco returned the Dockers' christening gifts to them. Through a 1951 treaty with France, the ban on Lady Docker was extended throughout the French Riviera.
News of a reconciliation between Lady Docker and the Royal Family of Monaco was reported by the North American Newspaper Alliance in February 1959. However, in September 1960, Lady Docker announced that she would invest in a company to build a waterfront casino in Cannes to rival the Monte Carlo Casino.

So, the rot set in, and without their main sources of income, the Dockers began to run out of money. In 1965, Bernard Docker put his yacht Shemara on the market for £600,000; it was eventually sold for £290,000.
Bernard had previously commissioned John I.Thornycroft & Company to build a yacht to his specifications in 1938, and it was christened Shemara. Shemara was requisitioned by the Royal Navy at the start of the Second World War in 1939 and used as a training vessel for anti-submarine warfare. It was during a training exercise with HMS Shemara that the submarine HMS Untamed was lost with all her crew. Shemara left RN service in 1946.




In 1966, the Dockers finally sold their estate in Hampshire and moved to Jersey in the Channel Islands, becoming tax exiles. Lady Docker later said of the people of Jersey: "They are the most frightfully boring, dreadful people that have ever been born." Thus cutting themselves off further from any sort of social cachets they had become used to in England…

These sort of outbursts led to the term 'Lady Docker' being used in a derogatory way in the north of England, specifically Lancashire, to describe a woman who has pretensions to be of high station but who in reality is anything but.
For example, 'Who does she think she is – Lady Docker?' or 'Here comes Lady Docker', very popular with Frankie Howard for a while…

Sadly, Bernard Docker was placed in a nursing home in 1976, where he died on 22 May 1978. Lady Docker died on 11 December 1983 in the Great Western Royal Hotel in London.
He was buried beside his wife's grave site in the Callingham family plot in the churchyard of St James the Less, Stubbings, near Maidenhead in Berkshire. Clement Callingham, Lady Docker's first husband, had been buried on the other side of her grave site.
Here endeth the lesson “How the mighty are fallen”.

And here is further reading about the flamboyant phenomenon known as Lady Docker….

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/artic ... itain.html

https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/ ... lady-death OBITUARY

https://www.primeresi.com/prime-property ... pad/25654/
 
.....and as an added bonus...

DUDLEY DOCKER, SHACKLETON'S SPONSOR - MIDLANDS INDUSTRIAL DYNAMO AND ENTREPRENEUR, AFTER WHOM ONE OF SHACKLETON'S THREE BOATS WAS NAMED



Frank Dudley Docker (26 August 1862 ñ 8 July 1944) was one England's foremost industrialists - a business tycoon - at the start of the 20th Century (it was said he showed 'an acuity in financial affairs that was hard to surpass'); and he was one of the three most significant sponsors of Shackleton's Endurance expedition, together with Sir James Caird and Dame Janet Stancomb-Wills.


All three of these supporters gave Shackleton very substantial amounts of money: Dudley Docker gave £10,000 towards the purchase and refit of Endurance; and all three had a ship's lifeboat named after them by him. The 'christening' ceremony took place while the whole party was marooned on the ice. The James Caird of course travelled with Shackleton to South Georgia. The Dudley Docker and the Stancomb Wills remained at Elephant Island and together formed the 'hut' under which the men sheltered. Those who formed the crew of the Dudley Docker were: Worsley, Greenstreet, Cheetham, Kerr, Macklin, Marston, Orde-Lees, Holness and McLeod.


The Dudley Docker nearly came to grief during the escape from the ice. Skipper Frank Worsley gives an idea of the Docker's plight: "About midnight we lost sight of the James Caird, which had the Stancomb Wills in tow, but not long after saw the light of the James Caird's compass-lamp, which Sir Ernest was flashing on their sail as a guide to us...we were hauling from my little pocket-compass, the boat's compass being smashed... Our poor fellows lit their pipes, their only solace, as our raging thirst prevented us from eating anything. By this time we had got into a bad tide-rip, which, combined with the heavy, lumpy sea, made it almost impossible to keep the Dudley Docker from swamping. We shipped several bad seas over the stern as well as abeam and over the bows. Orde-Lees, a rotten oarsman, made good by strenuous baling, well seconded by Cheetham. Greenstreet, a splendid fellow, relieved me at the tiller and helped generally. Greenstreet and Macklin were my right and left as stroke-oars throughout. McLeod and Cheetham were two good sailors and oars.'


'While still among the ice-floes' Shackleton says, 'the Dudley Docker got jammed between two masses while attempting to create a short cut. (The old adage about a short cut being the longest way round is often as true in the Antarctic as it is in the peaceful countryside.) The James Caird got a line aboard the Dudley Docker, and after some hauling the boat was brought clear of the ice again.' Later on the way to Elephant Island the Docker, with its better sails, had to tow the Stancomb Wills. Wet snow showers soaked the men, and they were all miserably cold. Many suffered from frostbitten feet and diarrhoea. Killer whales amiably swam alongside. Worsley, one hand clutching the mast, juggled with the sextant to get accurate readings. 'We had now had one hundred and eight hours of toil, tumbling, freezing, and soaking, with little or no sleep. I think Sir Ernest, Wild, Greenstreet, and I could say that we had no sleep at all. Although it was sixteen months since we had been in a rough sea, only four men were actually seasick, but several others were off colour.' At the end of the ghastly voyage, very close to Elephant Island, the Dudley Docker lost touch with the other boats for some 6 hours, from 10 p.m. the previous night. Shackleton notes 'I looked back vainly for the Dudley Docker...and was very anxious about her; but within half an hour the missing boat appeared, labouring through the spume-white sea, and presently she reached the comparative calm of the bay. We watched her coming with that sense of relief that the mariner feels when he crosses the harbour-bar.'


While the James Caird survived, sadly the other two boats disintegrated and succumbed to the fierce elements in the Antarctic, and despite searches were never found again.
 
The Dockers seemed to have issues every where they went.

Back in the mid 1950's they moored their yacht in Brixham outer harbour. All harbours have speed limits, for obvious safety reasons and good seamanship, but they chose to ignore it. They were reprimanded by the Harbourmaster ( I believe it was him) and they set sail, for somewhere else, in the usual huff that they seemed so adept at. If I remember correctly they were not missed.
 
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