Phantom Past
A playwright from Derbyshire, who is related to an actress of the 1920s silent-movie era, is hoping that Croydon residents will be able to assist in her quest for information about her ancestor.
Brenda Ray is appealing for information about Croydon-born actress Edith Yorke, who featured in the first silent cinema version of the Phantom of the Opera in 1925, starring Lon Chaney Snr.
The actress, who was born in the borough on 23rd December 1867, is the cousin of Brenda Ray's grandmother and also starred in a film called One Clear Call in 1925, as well as a western called Seven Keys to Baldpate with Wallace Beery.
Brenda, a playwright and photographer, gives talks about early photography and the silent cinema, and is desperate to find out more about her distant relative. She told the Guardian: "I don't know if Yorke was her maiden name, married name or assumed professional name but I was told she is my grandmother's cousin.
"Edith Yorke was said by the family to have played in many films, although she was a supporting actress rather: than a big star and went into movies when she was a mature woman, so she probably started out in the theatre. "All else about her seemed to have dissolved into family myth until I found little snippets about her on the Internet while doing a course." A number of the Shotton family were tailors by profession and some were also musicians and amateur entertainers, who performed in village halls in Victorian times. Brenda believes Edith Yorke was linked with this side of the family or could have possibly been the daughter of a tailor.
She said: "I don't know of any connection that the Shotton family might have with Croydon."
"However, some of them trained on Savillie Row and settled in London, so perhaps one of them moved out to Surrey."
By coincidence, Derby-based Brenda was working in Croydon in August 1985 when her third stage play, Dressing Up, was performed at the Warehouse Theatre.
But at that time she was totally oblivious to her ancestral connection to the borough.
It is thought that Edith Yorke died in California in 1934 from bone cancer, brought on by working under the dangerously hot lights used in the film industry during that area.
Brenda added: "I've been looking at stills from the 1925 movie but I have no idea what she looks like.
"I'd like to know who her parents were and whether she worked in this country as an actress before going to America."
Contact the Croydon Guardian Heritage team if you have any information on this story.