Sylvia Oakley: A hundred years ago...

[Mister Obvious]

https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/searc...via-oakley

She's probably been dead for 50 years.

[Mister Obvious]

I have no idea who she is, I just randomly found one of the photos while searching something else.

[Guest]

Such a lovely woman.

If this is her...

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/3911...anche-king

... she would've been 31 when the photos were taken.

The Internet actually doesn't know of an actress named Sylvia Oakley who was working during that period. The search engine assumes I'm looking for someone currently living. The obituary at the link above doesn't mention the deceased having been an actress. The link you posted may be the only online record of her existence.

[Guest]

The Wikipedia entry for the St. James's Theatre confirms that Peter Pan was performed there during the 1920s, but doesn't mention that Oakley played Wendy.

During the 1920s, the St James's staged Christmas seasons of Peter Pan with Peter played by Edna Best (1920 and 1922) and Jean Forbes-Robertson (1929), and Captain Hook by Ainley (1920), Ernest Thesiger (1921), Lyn Harding (1922), and Gerald du Maurier (1929).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_James%2...%80%931930

I'm doubting the grave I posted is hers. An English actress married to some ol' boy in Iowa? Possible, but not likely.

[Mister Obvious]

Such a lovely woman.

I know... agh.

So much intense feeling associated with those pictures.

Those super old school pictures really did capture so much soul essence.

Just makes me think maybe pictures are a bad idea. LOL :)

I tried hard to track her down, but it seems likely she just acted in some plays locally and then went on to live a family life or something like that. Probably didn't do much else in the public eye. That's what I assume. Nothing out there about her as far as I can tell.

My guess is family gave those pics to the archive because she's legend in their family and they were proud of her.

[Guest]

... but it seems likely she just acted in some plays locally....

Some of the actors who played Peter and Captain Hook were famous enough to have their own Wikipedia articles.

Yet they cast a complete unknown to play Wendy alongside them?

Something funny going on there.

She must've had a very short acting career, possibly due to an early, tragic death.

I checked out the photographer, Bassano, too. His ancestors were Jewish minstrels at the court of Elizabeth I at a time when Jews weren't exactly welcome in England. He photographed a lot of actors and English nobility. He doesn't appear to have snapped photos of just any random person in the street. Sylvia must've been noteworthy to him, or to the English public, for some reason.

[Mister Obvious]

I wouldn't assume she met with a tragic death though... I think she just went on to raise a family.

[user328]

I wouldn't assume she met with a tragic death though... I think she just went on to raise a family.

The reason I think her career was cut unnaturally short is because it seems odd for an actor to put in the effort needed to hit the big time and then decide it's not their cup of tea before achieving fame. The St. James's wasn't just a local community theater. It was a major theater in London. Such greats as Lawrence Olivier trode the boards there.

[Guest]

Whilst I have no knowledge of her date of birth nor early years, I do now that Sylvia Oakley (nee Spankie), some time between the wars, married Lt Col Algernon Edward Mann OBE AM RE and they went on to have two sons: Michael John (dob 17 Aprul 1927) and Denis Beaumont (dob 3 April 1930), both of whom are now deceased. Hope this helps.

[Mister Obvious]

Sylvia Helen Spankie
22 October 1894–1997

https://ancestors.familysearch.org/en/L1...-1894-1997

Says she lived in India. That's pretty exotic. Where did "Oakley" come from though?

https://victoriacrossonline.co.uk/algern...ann-obe-am

This talks about her husband being in Myanmar, so I guess it is the same people.

It's too bad that so many people have fallen thru the cracks of history. I really wish we had a record of every person who ever lived...

Imagine how many lookalikes there would be. Maybe even total repeats. You never know. A lot of people have lived and died throughout time, it's not impossible that people might just start repeating after a certain point.

Maybe that's why we conveniently lose records or never had them to begin with, so the secret never gets out...

[Mister Obvious]

Dude it says she had 11 siblings, but at least 4 of them appeared to have died as infants. 1880s man, hard times though. But the ones who did live made it to be pretty elderly. If Sylvia was 103 when she died, she was the oldest by far.