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English industrialist
Sir Bernard Dudley Frank Docker was an English industrialist.
Docker was born in Edgbaston, Birmingham on 9 August 1896. He was the only child of Frank Dudley Docker, an English businessman and financier, and Lucy Constance (daughter of distinguished lawyer John Benbow Hebbert). His parents initially lived at Rotton Park Lodge, close to the Docker Brothers varnish factory, before moving to The Gables, at Kenilworth, and, in 1935 moved to Coleshill House, Amersham, Buckinghamshire.
In 1933 Docker married British actress Jeanne Stuart (born Ivy Sweet), but the marriage was soon dissolved after pressure from Docker's parents. His father had her tracked by private detectives, and after finding her with an actor, David Hutcheson, Docker divorced her in 1935. She later married Baron Eugène von Rothschild in 1952. His second wife was Norah Collins (née Norah Royce Turner), a former showgirl that he married at Caxton Hall in 1949. She was the widow of Sir William Collins, the president of Fortnum & Mason, and also the widow of Clement Callingham, the head of Henekeys wine and spirits merchants. They lived at Heath House in Stockbridge. Without their main source of income, the Dockers began to run out of money. In 1965, Docker put Shemara, his yacht, on the market for £600,000; it was eventually sold for £290,000 to British businessman Harry Hyams. In Norah: the Autobiography of Lady Docker, their isolation was described. "Now we feel alone in this world, long since forgotten by those we helped, with only a handful of true and trusted friends remaining."
Docker was the managing director of the Birmingham Small Arms Company (BSA) group of companies from the early 1940s until 1956. He was the Chair of the British Hospitals Association in 1941 and represented them on the Nurses Salaries Committee chaired by Lord Rushcliffe which published two reports in 1943. At the end of May 1956, Docker was removed from the board of BSA, and he was replaced as chairman by Jack Sangster. An entire chapter of Norah: the Autobiography of Lady Docker is devoted to the Dockers and their separation from Midland Bank titled 'The B.S.A. Affair'. The book was ghostwritten and edited by Don Short. He also chaired The Daimler Company Limited and the Anglo-Argentine Tramways Company. He was awarded a knighthood in 1938 for his "energetic work during twelve years as the Chairman of Westminster Hospital."
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