Daisy Burrell

Daisy Burrell
Daisy Burrell (circa 1912)
Born	Daisy Ratton 16 June 1892 Wandsworth, London, England, UK
Died	10 June 1982 (aged 89) London, England, UK
Nationality	British
Education	Guildhall School of Music

Daisy Burrell (16 June 1892 – 10 June 1982), real name Daisy Isobel Eaglesfield Ratton, was an English stage actress and musical theatre performer who also appeared as a leading lady in silent films and in pantomime.

Daisy Ratton was born in Wandsworth in 1892, although according to Who Was Who in the Theatre 1912–1976 she was born in Singapore in 1893.

She had a complicated family history, marred by early deaths. Her grandfather, Charles George Ratton, was a stockbroker from an Anglo-Portuguese Roman Catholic family. He married Isabella Iphigenia de Pavia and they lived at Stoke Newington, but he died in 1873, aged only 25, leaving a young son and daughter. His widow, Daisy's grandmother, remarried the next year and died in 1890, aged 42. In 1891, Daisy's father, Charles Morris Ratton, married Ethel Eaglesfield Griffith, the daughter of another stockbroker, but in 1892, the year Daisy Ratton was born, he died at the age of 24. Her mother, Ethel Ratton, later became the partner of Henry S. Burrell, a licensed victualler who was licencee of the Clarence Hotel, Stoke Newington, and the Swan Hotel, Hythe. They had a son, John, and a daughter, Edwina Ethel. As the years passed, the Burrell family lived mostly in Kent, at Hythe and Folkestone.

Taking her step-father's surname, at least as a performer, Burrell first appeared on stage at the London Hippodrome in July 1903, playing the part of Kitty in The Redskins, a water spectacular by Alicia Ramsey. She went on to study at the Guildhall School of Music.

On leaving there, she went into pantomime at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, and first came to wide attention in 1910, appearing at the Vaudeville Theatre in The Girl in the Train. After closing in London this production, starring Burrell, went on tour until 1911.