On October 12, 1916, Captain Alfred Amory Sullivan of the South African Infantry, was killed in action during the Battle of Le Transloy, part of the Somme Offensive. He was just one of many casualties from the South African Infantry. He was also one of the many children of actor/manager Thomas Amory Sullivan. Alfred’s mother was Adeline Aguilar Wheatcroft, formerly Sullivan, nee Stanhope.
The lives of these people were steeped in theatrical intrigue and debauchery. Pretty much what one expects from arty types. (I can say that because I was one. An arty type, I mean.)
Thomas was born in Edinburgh in 1844 while Adeline was born in Paris nine years later. They met, presumably through the theatre, and married in London in 1876. Alfred was born a few years later and, his brother, Stanhope Augustus Sullivan, two years after that.
While Thomas was away on business in the US, Adeline got up to a bit of hanky panky with her leading man at the time. This chap was Nelson Wheatcroft. He was an English actor, originally christened Christopher William Wheatcroft. Once he started acting, he took his mother’s maiden name for his first.
Nelson, while touring with Miss Blackwood’s Company in 1875, met and married Jane Elizabeth Rogers, a fellow actor in the company. The pair had five children, though two died in infancy. They lived in London where Jane looked after the brood while Nelson worked for a number of theatrical companies, including one managed by Thomas Amory Sullivan.
In 1881, Adeline and Nelson toured the country for a year. They shared a stage and a number of beds. Thomas found out and was not very happy about this new arrangement. He filed for divorce and, while Adeline said his accusations of adultery were incorrect, the court granted the divorce in 1883.
Nelson and Adeline ran off to Argentina together before eventually settling in the US where Nelson became a successful actor, playwright and director. He also became quite the accomplished bigamist having married Adeline in 1886 without bothering to divorce poor Jane who was left, bringing up his kids in London. In fact, a newspaper reported that he left two widows when he died in 1897.
Adeline continued performing, dying, eventually, in 1935 at her home in Los Angeles.
Actually, I think the whole double marriage and messy divorce thing, affected Jane’s two daughters. They both became teachers and never married.
Back in the UK, an unhappy Thomas married Isabelle Horne II in 1885. Presumably that cheered him up. They eventually moved to Australia and had a whole slew of kids.
But, returning to first son Alfred, he decided to move to South Africa sometime before the turn of the 20th century. Not long afterwards, he was fighting in the Second Boer War. He survived and settled down in Cape Town where he met and married Marion Louise Goldsworthy. They had two kids before he went away to fight once again, this time in Europe.
Incidentally, on their marriage record, Alfred is described as a widower though who his first wife was is anyone’s guess.
Marion and, I assume, the kids, moved to England while Alfred was serving in France. They lived in Surbiton, Surrey. After the war, Marion undertook an extensive search for her husband’s remains, but to no avail. She never remarried.
Incidentally, Thomas died in Bronte, NSW in 1928 while his second wife, Isabella, died in 1955. Jane Wheatcroft, died in West Ham, London in 1921. Marion, who seems to have outlived them all, travelled to Argentina in 1940 and died, 20 years later, in Chile.
What a wonderful whirlwind of discovery this all was!
