Effie Bancroft

Marie Effie Wilton, Lady Bancroft (1839–1921) was an English actress and theatre manager. She appeared onstage as Marie Wilton until after her marriage in December 1867 to Squire Bancroft, when she usually appeared under the name Lady Bancroft. Bancroft and her husband were important in the development of Victorian era theatre through their presentation of innovative plays at the London theatres that they managed, first the Prince of Wales's Theatre and later the Haymarket Theatre.

Bancroft was born at Doncaster, and as a child appeared on the stage with her parents, who were both actors. Among her early parts was that of Fleance in Macbeth (1846). She made her London début on 15 September 1856, at the Lyceum Theatre, as the boy Henri in Belphegor, playing the same night in Perdita; or, the Royal Milkmaid. She won great popularity in several boy roles, in burlesques at various theatres, as Cupid in two different plays, and notably as Pippo, in The Maid and the Magpie, by H. J. Byron, at the Royal Strand Theatre (1858). For several years she remained at the Strand, taking numerous parts of the same general type.

In April 1865, she began, in partnership with Henry Byron, the management of the Prince of Wales's Theatre. For two seasons before her marriage she managed the theatre alone. She secured as a leading actor Squire Bancroft, whom she had met shortly before in Liverpool and married in December 1867. The Prince of Wales's soon became noted for its series of successful comedies by T. W. Robertson, namely: Society (1865), Ours (1866), Caste (1867), Play (1868), School (1869) and M. P. (1870).

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