History Book

Report on Swavesey & District History Society – January 2025 meeting

About forty attended the talk on “A Very English Dynasty: Four Generations of the D ‘Oyly Carte family”.  Jim Stebbings of East Dereham in Norfolk gave a  very detailed presentation.  In 1839 Richard Cart (1808 – 1891), a respected flautist and partner in the Rudall and Rose Company, makers of musical instruments, married Eliza, who traced her descent to the Norman “D’Oyly” family.  They extended the name of their first son Richard born in 1844, to Richard D’Oyly Carte to distinguish him from an already well-established musician.  On leaving university in in 1861, he entered his father’s business and also began to compose operettas before theatrical management began to take over his activities.  His early clients included Oscar Wilde and Sir Henry Morton Stanley.  In 1875 he produced ‘Trial by Jury,’ a comic opera by Gilbert and Sullivan, followed by The Sorcerer (1877) and HMS Pinafore (1878).  This activity went so well that D’Oyly Carte became the responsible manager of the venture, with Gilbert and Sullivan as partners and following The Pirates of Penzance (1880) and Patience (1881) the three were earning a fortune, with Richard having agencies in several theatres.  In 1879 Richrd went to USA and soon he had five touring companies performing the Gilbert and Sullivan operas there.  He invested a proportion of his wealth in the erection of a large new theatre off The Strand in London in 1889 which he named The Savoy after former ownership of the land by Count Peter of Savoy.  This was the first public building in the world to be lit by electricity and immediately adjacent he built the Savoy hotel.  With 200 rooms and, unusually, bathrooms too, it became the top place to dine or stay in London, especially for wealthy Americans.  During 1900 Richard’s health failed.  The death of Sullivan (Nov. 1900) proved a great blow and Richard died in April 1901. 

Richard D’Oyly Carte married twice.  By his first wife, who died aged 32 he had two sons, Lucas, who became a barrister but died of tuberculosis in 1907, and Rupert who went on to be chairman of the Savoy Hotel Ltd.  His second wife, Helen Lenoir, was earlier his secretary and took an active part in organising his work.  Rupert married and had a daughter, Bridget, in 1908.  Rupert died in 1948 leaving Bridget in charge of both the D’Oyly Carte Opera company and the hotel business.  She was a very industrious and successful manager but also a very heavy smoker.  Bridget died of lung cancer in 1985, aged 77.  In her will she left a £5.5 million fortune but with no children of her own or surviving siblings, she was the end of her family line.

Next meeting- 11 February.  Note earlier in the month than usual.  One of our own.  David Duker