Mr. Graves Stoker

The Times

January 31, 1938

     Mr. Graves Stoker, F.R.C.S.I., of Gaddesden Hall, Hemel Hempstead, who died suddenly on Friday evening, was a member of an Irish family with a strong medical tradition. His brother, William Stoker, was professor of surgery at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, and another relative was the late Sir Thornley Stoker, a former president of that institution, while his grandfather, his father, and two other brothers were also doctors.

    Born in Dublin in 1864, Graves Stoker was the son of Dr. E. A. Stoker, and received his medical education at the College of Surgeons. Dublin, where he was at one time senior demonstrator in anatomy. Continuing his father's practice in Rutland Square, he became consulting surgeon to Cork Street and Drumcondra Hospitals, and for some years was also a member of the Council of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. On the death of his brother Ernest, he took over the latter's practice in 14, Hertford Street, W., and remained there until 1932. During the War he was attached to the Military Hospital, Rochester Row, and subsequently became assistant surgeon to St. Paul's Hospital, Endell Street.

    In common with his brothers, two of whom, Ernest and Frank, were Irish internationals, Graves Stoker was in his youth a keen Rugby football player, playing for the Dublin Wanderers.

    He married in 1903 Constance Bennet, M.B., Ch.B., who survives him with two sons and three daughters.

Capt. H. G. Stoker

The Times

February 13, 1966

    Captain H. G. Stoker, the actor, who died on Wednesday, his 81st birthday, will be equally well remembered as Captain H. G. D. Stoker, D.S.O., R.N., commander of the first submarine to travel half-way round the world and to dive through the Dardanelles during the course of operations against Turkey in 191. Hew Gordon Dacre Stoker, a younger son of William Stoker, was born in Dublin on February 2, 1885, entered the Royal Navy in 1900, and joined the newly formed submarine headquarters in 1906. He was lent to the Australian Navy as Captain of the submarine AE 2, but the offer of this ship for service in home waters was accepted by the Admiralty soon after the outbreak of war. AE 2 joined the Fleet off Gallipoli in February, 1915, dived through the strait on the day of the troops' disembarkation. but was hit and holed in the Sea of Marmora. Stoker remained a prisoner of var in Turkey for the next three and a half years.

    On his return to England he felt unhappy in the postwar Service, and in 1920, while waiting for a naval appointment. he improved his acquaintance with the theatre, hitherto limited to a few performances in prisoner of war camps, by taking a small part in H. M. Harwood's The Grain of Mustard Seed. As Norman McKinnel his first director. had warned him, the question was not whether Stoker had talent-----McKinnel was satisfied on that score-but whether he would get engagements. Luckily he proved to be a "natural" for his next part, that of a country squire, a Philistine but no fool, in Harwood's A Social Convenienice: a part of a type common in plays of that period and thenceforward, since he continued to show a flair for it, entrusted to Stoker on many occasions between the two wars. He made it seem especially plausible and at the same time comic in such small-scale performances as his Colonel in Journey's End and his Admiral in The Flashing Stream. His elaborately casual manner sat authentically on those characters. He gave the weight of whole speeches to their monosyllabic replies.

    Stoker was in management when the Second World War began, but he rejoined the Navy and served for the duration, reverting to the Retired List with the rank of captain in 1946. He was back in the theatre that same year, and soon afterwards appeared in two of the last plays of Lonsdale and James Bridie respectively. In addition to publishing his autobiography Straws in the Wind, Stoker had collaborated in a plav with a naval background Under the Surface and himself taken a part in it in 1932.

    He married Miss Dorothie M. Pidcock, the actress, in 1925.

Mr. Graves Stoker

The Times

February 4, 1938

“G.H." writes:-

    The art of healing was Graves Stoker's life and to it he brought a devotion and an ability that are rarely seen No man read medicine more widely, no man applied the results of his learning with less display. He would seem sometimes almost casually to suggest a treatment or a remedy, which, when one came to inquire, was always discovered to be the most modern of its kind found effective in the light of experience. To the day of his death he never tired of learning, and nothing pleased him more than to listen to the experiences of his friends in other professions.

    It would be impossible in a few lines to tell of the many-sidedness of his life. A fine all-round athlete, he possessed to the end a love for and a skill in ball games. If in driving his car he noticed a game of cricket or football being played, he would stop to watch. It mattered not a bit who the players were. He was quite as interested in a few small boys with a bat and ball as he was in a county side at Lord's.

    Children of all ages loved him, and it was delightful to see him with his own grandchildren. They seemed to have a natural and instinctive community of interest. To hear him speak of his young days was to see Dublin of the eighties and nineties vividly conjured from the past; with him one listened to Tim Healy and Edward Carson in the Four Courts, with him one dined in Trinity College or walked on St. Stephen's Green. That small, brilliant, witty society, of which he and his family were a part, lived again as he spoke, and his listeners could capture something of the spirit of an epoch that seemed to be so much more cultured, pleasant, and sensible than the times in which we live.

    From whatever angle you looked at Graves Stoker his personality reflected something fresh, stimulating, and infinitely kind. No one can tell, except those who were the recipients, of the immense exertions he made and the great burdens he undertook to help, not only those who were near to him. but all others who came to him in trouble. He was a great Irish gentleman who brought to England that indefinable quality of charm and generosity of spirit which endeared him instantly to all kind and manner of people.