Talk:Richard Barker (stage manager)

Early stage career and first marriage
Barker's first marriage was in a theatrical milieu, and interesting if only for that reason. Unfortunately, it is not well-referenced, as far as I have been able to determine. (The "Tatham history" page currently referenced in the article probably fails WP:RS.)

What I have gleaned is that the first marriage was to a niece of Michael Balfe. Her father was George Russell Cruise of Dublin, who had perhaps four daughters on the stage, and at least one son. The daughters Marie or Maria, and Bella (I suppose), appeared at the Bristol Theatre, and in a history of that theatre there is a Mr R Barker, an undistinguished actor who we can take to be the subject of the article. Richard married Marie, we think, but the marriage didn't last. According to The Peerage site there was another marriage. See https://archive.org/details/bristolstageitss00poweuoft/page/n8/mode/2up/search/Cruise for some references.

There are also Julia Mary Cruise, who appeared in Edinburgh; and Anna Cruise, married name Cowell, who appeared on the American stage in the late 1840s. She has a Find a Grave page. Julia died quite young.

We have to assume that George Russell Cruise married a Balfe sister (don't know about this). Thank you for the attention to the article. I'd like to raise some points here. Charles Matthews (talk) 16:56, 20 April 2020 (UTC)


 * Yes, we'll need something better than the Tatham family history site. Perhaps with the information that they dug up, though, you can find the marring info on a good source in Ancestry.com?  If you don't have a subscription there, perhaps User:Jack1956 can look for some Richard Barker birth/death/marriage info with the information there?  Or in Burke's Peerage? -- Ssilvers (talk) 04:25, 21 April 2020 (UTC)


 * BTW, I think the photo that we are using was probably published in Cellier and Bridgeman (1914), even though it was probably taken as a publicity photo around the time of The Emerald Isle. -- Ssilvers (talk) 05:33, 21 April 2020 (UTC)