Bernard Docker

Sir Bernard Dudley Frank Docker (born August 9, 1896 in Edgbaston , Birmingham , Great Britain , † May 22, 1978 in Bournemouth ) was a British industrialist. After the Second World War he was one of the richest men in his country. Together with his second wife Norah Docker , who lived an extroverted and lavish lifestyle, he became the subject of extensive public coverage in the British media in the 1950s. Irregularities in the company's management, but above all the appearance of his wife and several scandals she sparked, led Docker to lose his functions in the mid-1950s. At the end of his life he was almost penniless.

biography

Family background

Bernard Docker's father was the entrepreneur Frank Dudley Docker (1862–1944), his mother was Lucy Constance, b. Hebbert. The father ran several large companies, including the Birmingham Small Arms Company (BSA), which also included the automobile manufacturer Daimler and the coachbuilder Hooper , the Metropolitan Cammell Carriage and Wagon Company , which produced tanks during the First World War , and the Midland Bank . He also held shares in a number of railway companies such as the London Metropolitan Railway . Bernard was the only child of Dudley and Lucy Docker. His parents prepared him from the start to take over his father's functions as an adult.

Bernard Docker was personally considered shy and introverted. He was married twice. His first marriage to actress Jeanne Stuart in 1933 only lasted three months. It ended after a private detective hired by Bernard's father found Jeanne Stuart of adultery. Docker's second wife was Lady Norah Docker, b. Gymnast. The marriage lasted from 1949 until Bernard Docker's death in 1978. Both marriages remained childless.

Career advancement

Commissioned by Bernard Docker: MY Shemara

Bernard Docker was educated in the elite boarding school Harrow . After graduating from high school, he got a position in the Metropolitan Carriage Wagon & Finance Company , a company belonging to the BSA group, through which he circumvented his drafting into the army during the First World War . In 1920 he became a board member there at the age of 24. In the following two decades, Docker took over the chairmanship of several British industrial and trading companies such as Anglo-Argentine Tramways Company and Thomas Cook on the intervention of his father . In 1939 he joined the board of directors of BSA, in 1940 he became director and in December 1941 finally chairman of the board of the Daimler Motor Company. After his father's death in July 1944, Docker was one of the wealthiest people in Britain. In addition to company investments, he also owned numerous properties and the MY Shemara , the largest privately owned motor yacht in the world at the time. One source puts Docker's fortune at £ 890,000, which would correspond to a value of around £ 30 million in 2020, other sources speak of a billion-dollar fortune at today's value.

Marriage to Norah Docker: Spotlight and Decline

The Dazzling Dockers

The last Docker Daimler: Golden Zebra (1955)

Since 1949, Bernard Docker had been married to the extroverted Norah Docker, a twice widowed former hostess whose former husbands had also been millionaires. Docker gave his wife a seat on the board of Daimler and Hooper at an early stage and also looked after some of her relatives. A brother-in-law of Norah Dockers, for example, became a manager at Daimler and later also a member of the board of directors at the car body manufacturer Carbodies , which also belonged to the BSA group.

Norah Docker pulled her husband into the spotlight shortly after they got married. In the following decade, the Dockers were the subject of almost continuous coverage in the tabloid media . The couple were soon known in the press as the Dazzling Dockers . In particular, Norah Docker showed a lavish lifestyle that stood in stark contrast to the austerity -dominated life in Britain in the early post-war years and which the hitherto cautious Bernard Docker made his own. Examples of this are the so-called Docker Daimlers initiated by Norah Docker , large and eye-catching show cars from the Daimler Motor Company, which appeared in ever new versions from 1951 to 1955 and showed extraordinary details such as gold-plated bumpers, zebra skin seat covers and 7,000 hand-painted decorative stars on the paintwork . The conservative British upper class, who were Daimler's typical clientele, mostly perceived the Docker Daimler as “hair-raising” or as an expression of bad taste. According to some sources, Norah Docker's appearance was a reason for the loss of reputation and the decline of the Daimler brand. Isolated scandals such as the slap in the face of a waiter in Monaco or Norah Docker's public closeness to Billy Hill , the head of organized crime in London, damaged the reputation of both Dockers. The media also addressed the private use of Docker Daimler and the purchase of a castle in Wales at company expense.

Forced withdrawal from professional life

In 1953 the first professional setback for Bernard Docker followed: The Midland Bank, whose board of directors he had been on for more than 25 years, expressed "concerned" about the "unworthy lifestyle" and asked Docker to resign. He was reluctant to do so.

In May 1956, the BSA board also split from Bernard Docker. This was triggered by Norah Docker's cloakroom costs of over £ 8,000 as well as the cost of air transport for two Docker Daimlers to Monaco , which she invoiced to the Daimler Company as operating expenses. The majority of the board members had then lost confidence in Bernard Docker and were of the opinion that the media coverage associated with this behavior was "not associated with any reasonable economic value for the BSA Group". Six out of nine board members therefore voted against Bernard Docker's remaining on the board. Bernard Docker fought back with a £ 20,000 campaign in which, among other things, signed photos by Norah Docker were sent to 17,000 shareholders and which also included TV spots; in the end, however, the elimination could not be avoided. Jack Sangster became Docker's successor . Daimler then had to enforce the return of the five Docker Daimlers in court.

Retirement and old age

During the second half of 1956, Bernard and Norah Docker withdrew completely from the BSA group. They initially continued their lavish lifestyle, but ran into economic difficulties in the early 1960s. They sold MY Shemara in 1965 and their Hampshire estate the following year . In order to save taxes, they first settled on the Channel Island of Jersey before moving to Mallorca in the 1970s .

Since 1976, Bernard Docker lived alone in a nursing home in Bournemouth, southern England . He died there after a long illness and almost went blind in May 1978. When he died, Norah Docker was still living on Mallorca. A few years later she returned to London, where she died almost penniless in 1983.

literature

• Norah Docker: Norah: the autobiography of Lady Docker , WH Allen, 1969.
• Tim Hogarth: The Dazzling Lady Docker: Britain's Forgotten Reality Superstar , Scratching Shed Publishing Ltd., 2018, ISBN 978-0995586147
• Brian Long: Daimler & Lanchester. A Century of Motor History , Longford International Publications, 1995, ISBN 1899154019
• Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, David Burgess-Wise: Daimler Century . Patrick Stephens Ltd., 1995, ISBN 1-85260-494-8
• Richard Townsend: Docker's Daimlers. Daimler and Lanchester Cars 1945 to 1960 , Amberley Publishing, Stroud, 2017, ISBN 978 1 4456 6316 6

Remarks

1. ↑ The marriage was concluded in April 1933. Three months later, the couple separated; the divorce finally took place in January 1935. Jeanne Stuart married the Austrian nobleman Eugène Daniel von Rothschild in 1952.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Tim Hogarth: The Dazzling Lady Docker: Britain's Forgotten Reality Superstar , Scratching Shed Publishing Ltd., 2018, ISBN 978-0995586147 , p. 110.
2. ↑ Tim Hogarth: The Dazzling Lady Docker: Britain's Forgotten Reality Superstar , Scratching Shed Publishing Ltd., 2018, ISBN 978-0995586147 , p. 111.
3. ^ Brian Long: Daimler & Lanchester. A Century of Motor History , Longford International Publications, 1995, ISBN 1899154019 , p. 190.
4. ^ Brian Long: Daimler & Lanchester. A Century of Motor History , Longford International Publications, 1995, ISBN 1899154019 , p. 192.
5. ↑ ^{a b} Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, David Burgess-Wise: Daimler Century . Patrick Stephens Ltd., 1995, ISBN 1-85260-494-8 , p. 244.
6. ↑ Inflation calculator at fxtop.com (accessed April 1, 2020).
7. ^ Brian Long: Daimler & Lanchester. A Century of Motor History , Longford International Publications, 1995, ISBN 1899154019 , p. 213.
8. ↑ Mike Hutton: Life in 1950s London , Amberley Publishing Limited, 2014, ISBN 9781445621333 , Chapter 5.
9. ^ ^{A b} Glennys Bell: Those Fabulous Dockers: A Flag Ended the Fun , Sydney Morning Herald, May 28, 1978, p. 29.
10. ^ Brian Long: Daimler & Lanchester. A Century of Motor History , Longford International Publications, 1995, ISBN 1899154019 , p. 215.
11. ↑ Overview of the five Docker Daimlers ( Gold Car , Blue Clover , Silver Flash , Star Dust and Golden Zebra ) at Richard Townsend: Docker's Daimlers. Daimler and Lanchester Cars 1945 to 1960 , Amberley Publishing, Stroud, 2017, ISBN 978 1 4456 6316 6 , p. 78 ff.
12. ↑ History Hoopers on the website www.coachbuild.com (accessed on 1 April 2020).
13. ^ Brian Sewell: Daimler: Extravagant design and magnificent bodywork. www.independent.co.uk, February 10, 2004, accessed April 1, 2020 . 
14. ↑ Classic Cars Special: English classic cars. Issue 7/8/9 1994, p. 36.
15. ↑ Tim Hogarth: The Dazzling Lady Docker: Britain's Forgotten Reality Superstar , Scratching Shed Publishing Ltd., 2018, ISBN 978-0995586147 , p. 178.
16. ↑ Mike Hutton: The Story of Soho: The Windmill Years 1932-1964 , Amberley Publishing Limited, 2012, ISBN 9781445612317 .
17. ^ Note in: Der Spiegel , issue 51/1955, p. 56.
18. ^ Richard Townsend: Docker's Daimlers. Daimler and Lanchester Cars 1945 to 1960, Amberley Publishing, Stroud, 2017, ISBN 978 1 4456 6316 6 , p. 13.
19. ^ Brian Long: Daimler & Lanchester. A Century of Motor History , Longford International Publications, 1995, ISBN 1899154019 , p. 240.
20. ^ Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, David Burgess-Wise: Daimler Century . Patrick Stephens Ltd., 1995, ISBN 1-85260-494-8 , p. 270.
21. ^ Brian Long: Daimler & Lanchester. A Century of Motor History , Longford International Publications, 1995, ISBN 1899154019 , p. 243.
22. ^ RPT Davenport-Hines: Dudley Docker: The Life and Times of a Trade Warrior , Cambridge University Press, 2004, ISBN 9780521894005 , pp. 231-233.